Re: [NTLK] might give up on newton

On May 14, 2008, at 7:32 PM, Brian Parker wrote:
>
> 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.
>
I wouldn't be so negative about it just yet Brian. Sometimes it
takes a while for the right person to come along and decide to work
on an open sourced project. You never know, it could still prove to
be a great gift to Newton users everywhere to have access to the source.

Of course I do thing the the previous poster over states his case
with regards to this, as there are also MANY examples of open sourced
projects that have languished into inexistance.

Hopefully Newtchat comes back to life.

Thanks again for that,
Marty

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Received on Thu May 15 01:25:33 2008