Re: [NTLK] might give up on newton

On May 14, 2008, at 8:47 AM, Tweedy Flanigan wrote:
>
> Something else: it's certainly true that we owe a debt of gratitude to
> all the folks still developing for the Newton. But it seems like we're
> stuck in the 1997 shareware culture that the Mac too had for so many
> years. Shareware isn't ever going to revive this platform, especially
> if the developers quit working and never finish/release/free their
> code. When developers give up the code and quit asking for $10
> licensing fees, there will be SO MUCH more room for innovation. The
> WaveLAN drivers and Eistein are good examples of the way this should
> work; ATA is one example from *many* of the other side. I know that,
> at least in part, this is a community trying to live in the past.
> That's great. But we all deserve a little more forward thinking from
> the folks who maintain the software side of the platform.

But thats a problem, who are the developers that will expand on that
code? I released full source for my NewtChat AIM client in hopes that
someone would be able to pick it up and get it working again, but
nobody was interested. Maybe its just not something that enough
people want. It might help to have development tools that run on
current machines but those are unlikely given the very small number
(zero?) of programmers around now. Giving out passwords or an
unlocked version of old software is good but the source code is mostly
useless.

Brian Parker

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Received on Wed May 14 22:32:27 2008