X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f996b,f7d991da3cc3c27e X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-07-15 06:28:30 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!194.213.69.151!news.algonet.se!algonet!f.de.uu.net!news.uni-stuttgart.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!news.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!not-for-mail From: Markus Gebhard Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art Subject: Re: Jave1.1 released Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 15:29:32 +0200 Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany Lines: 71 Message-ID: <3B519ABC.49126441@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> References: <3B4D80FB.63F9A3ED@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> <1gB37.35076$B56.6848104@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com> <3B4EEEBC.AF5833DC@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: wn4-jarjar.wn4.uni-karlsruhe.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de 995203709 26091 172.20.12.141 X-Complaints-To: usenet@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: archiver1.google.com alt.ascii-art:6668 Russell Marks wrote: > > (I hope the group will tolerate this in the absence of an > alt.ascii-art.d...) > > > > > [...] > > I didn't quote that, please don't misrepresent my posts. You are right, I apologize. > > 1) As kind of an experiment I have made the Jave Movie Player an open > > source project (http://www.jave.de/player/). This applet is a part of > > Bad choice for an experiment, IMHO. I suspect only people already > using Jave would look at this Tha Jave movie/animation player project is not based on Jave - it work's independently and provides the most complete open file format for ascii animations I have seen yet. Up to now there were no advantages for me (and others) by releasing it as open source. > - and why would you use Jave if you were > a fan of open source? I am a fan of freeware rather than open source software. If someone does not like freeware (?) I will not try to force him to use any... (BTW: I am a fan of open source software when it is a about security resons. This is true for web servers, firewalls, mail clients, etc. - but I do not care that much about security in text editors) When using freeware I always know that there is somebody who feels responsible to fix bugs and to provide a stable version. With open source software I see two scenarious: 1) The apache scenario There are a lot of highly qualified people working on something that a lot of people need: A highly configurable web server, faster and more secure than others and not from a monopol company like MS. 2) pick-one-of-the-many-releases-and-fix-it-yourself scenario I think about the thousands of web sites with open source projects that are in fact dead. I have had this experience when looking for a good Java GIF encoder for example. There were many versions based on the same piece of source code - they all were different in some way and each of them was incomplete. Some of them were optimized for certain platforms and did not run on e.g. Linux any longer. I have had the same experience with some more or less complete programs... I do not think Jave belongs to scenario 1). And I do not want Jave to pass away. Instead I want to fix the bugs, write documentation and I want to make it work on as many systems as possible. This is my way of supporting open systems. There is one more thing you have to know: As soon as Jave becomes open source I will lose my motivation on working on it. And I am not going to be someone who coordinates new releases then. Jave grew from the fun I had and still have in writing extraordinary cool algorithms/tools. > If you provide matching binaries, > then any source code that compiles and has a licence is in an > acceptable form for release (since you wouldn't expect users to > compile it, just programmers). So this reason is invalid. So there are no disadvantages for me to release the source code, but what are the advantages? Why should I release it? > And again I must ask - why not? And I ask: why? Markus