>> I always wonder why so many people seem to think that open source - free project(s) are so great... I have not heard the pharmaceutical industry
>giving
>> their products away for free or even the formula's to what they developed.
>Neither
>> have I heard that for the automotive industry or airplane industry, or
>electronics
>> for that matter... So what am I missing here? Can somebody explain???

Sorry about the /. post. When I read the article, I focused in on a comparison with Walter and the DM project. I was also interested in the working methods, and wisdom from an obviously competent person - I glossed over the previous discussions in this thread about the philosophical question of why one should devote time to something that did not provide a cost-of-living level financial return.

I’m sure many who read this group feel sympathy for your current difficulties. I know that I do. But as for offering a compelling explanation for why one should offer one’s IP for free public consumption, its really a question that one either already has an answer for, or will have to develop internally.

Last night, I was having a late night beer at a bar with some friends, and I happened to have met the bartender a short time in the past on vacation. She was a Scottish girl, very pretty really, and I noticed that she was reading Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Pirsig. I thought it very odd because 2 weeks prior I had suggested a friend of mine borrow one of my copies – I happen to have two – for his trip abroad. He really is one of my best friends, and he seemed a little lost recently. After I gave a copy to him, I thought it might be a good idea to read it again.

Coincidence and loose ramblings aside, what the answer to your question boils down to is that at some fundamental level, people are compelled to do things that in the absence of similar understanding by the observer are inexplicable. Most of the theory and early implementation of all the things we are using to have this conversation were evolved by people who did not, and do not benefit from them financially. I don’t think that means a person should avoid creating new things because precedent suggests that they don’t help with life transactions.

Well, I’m hopeful that you will solve your current life equation. Best wishes for the rest of the year.

Richard

Please start another thread if you want to debate open vs. closed source.

Let's all thank Linus Torvalds for giving away Linux to the masses and making this discussion possible at all.

Mark

Getting back to the original theme of this discussion, a hard aspect of any Linux port would be the debugger issue.  On Windows we use the Microsoft CodeView format.  Debuggers on Linux expect something else.

The standard GNU debugger, GDB, expects the 'stabs' format, although Dwarf-II
has displaced stabs as the standard in GCC 3.1 and up.  The alternative WineDbg
can handle CodeView format on Linux, but whether that means only CodeView in a
pure Windows app running under WINE, or also native Linux apps, is unclear. I
suspect only WINE support.  Yet WineDBG is open source and could be 'tweaked.'
http://www.winehq.com/Docs/wine-devel/dbg-others.shtml
(see chart at bottom)

Which then would be the path of least resistance:

1. Leave DMC symbol generation alone, use non-standard WineDbg, possibly with
custom mods to handle native Linux apps.
2. Leave DMC symbols alone, write a converter from CodeView format to Dwarf-II,
and use standard GDB.
3. Change DMC itself to emit Dwarf-II on Linux, and use standard GDB.

Mark

Mark Evans wrote:

> Please start another thread if you want to debate open vs. closed source.
>
> Let's all thank Linus Torvalds for giving away Linux to the masses and making this discussion possible at all.

Well, thanks to him for sure, but also to BSD (Berkeley Software Distributions) which have been FREELY available for a very long time and probably a few others...

http://www.freebsd.org/
http://www.openbsd.org/
http://www.netbsd.org/

Jan

"Matthew Wilson" <dmd@synesis.com.au> wrote in message news:avfhlh$29un$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Let's try and keep this newsgroup in its current position: one of the few
on
> the web where aggressiveness, arrogance, pomposity and attitude are all
left
> at the door.

It's true, the Digital Mars groups & posters have been great. In its 2 years of operation, I think only one message was yanked (because the poster had mistakenly posted copyrighted info).

It's always been the case with DM and its previous incarnations (I ran the Zortech BBS for years). I like to think it is because DMC simply appeals to programmers with class.

"Mark Evans" <Mark_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:avikeu$umv$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> As DMC and Eclipse improve, they are approaching that 10x mark.  Thank you Walter Bright! :-)

You're welcome!

P.S. I agree that something has to be quite a bit better than established competition in order to convince people to switch, not just incrementally better. Right now I'm focussed on eliminating conformance problems in the compiler, this will go a long way towards removing barriers to converting to DMC++.

"Matthew Wilson" <dmd@synesis.com.au> wrote in message news:avdt2a$1d40$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> You're getting mentions in most of the articles I'm writing (and to be published this year in CUJ & WDM), as well as some in a loftier venture
that
> is bubbling away at the moment. :)
>
> You've also got a menu link on STLSoft's websites, which none of the other compilers do yet. The only ones that will be getting the same are those
that
> take a similarly good-natured and mutually beneficial as do yourself, and
I
> can count them all on one hand. On three fingers in fact. Ironically, they're the three best compilers. Go figure!

And I thank you for that! And I'm not at all surprised that the best compilers are the ones that value their customers the most.

:o)



In article <3E203A35.88379ADE@smartsoft.us>, Jan Knepper says...
>
>Mark Evans wrote:
>
>> Please start another thread if you want to debate open vs. closed source.
>>
>> Let's all thank Linus Torvalds for giving away Linux to the masses and making this discussion possible at all.
>
>Well, thanks to him for sure, but also to BSD (Berkeley Software Distributions) which have been FREELY available for a very long time and probably a few others...
>
>http://www.freebsd.org/
>http://www.openbsd.org/
>http://www.netbsd.org/
>
>Jan
>
>

A first step to open source is to put it on SourceForge.net.  It's a lot easier than trying to maintain similar capabilities on your own.

"Jan Knepper" <jan@smartsoft.us> wrote in message news:3E19A553.526FBC80@smartsoft.us...
> > I'd really like someone who was willing to manage a project to see DMD through to a linux version. It's a project worthy of anyone's management skills <g>.
>
> Well, I have put up the website for that at http://www.opend.org/ It there a link from http://www.digitalmars.com/ to it??? I have not
checked in
> a long time to be honest as I have been burried with financial burden and
really
> have to focus on making money and keep the server and newsgroups going.
>
> > A good friend & colleague is working on the IDDE, but since he's unpaid, priority has to go to projects that pay the bills.
>
> I recognize that... I have done quite some work on the IDDE code as well
and do
> not think I am far away from having it decently fire up and actually
getting it
> back in shape, but hey... The person working on in now has it name written
all
> over the thing if I remember correctly.
>
> > I'm open to suggestion for anyone who wants to work on improving any of
the
> > rtl or ancilliary
> > tools. A worthwhile project would be to convert all the library asm to
using
> > the compiler inline assembler as much as possible (most of it was
written long
> > before the compiler had a decent inline asm).
>
> That should be relatively easy to do...
> I think a good way to start with that would be to add all the RTL code to
CVS as
> that enabled more than one person to work on the stuff at the same time. I
have
> put the D front into CVS on opend.org, but have not seen many actually
access
> the CVS. Of course I do not give unsupervised write permission... Same
should be
> done for RTL and other ancilliary tools source.
>
> Also... I do have a version of IMPLIB that makes creating the system .LIB
files
> from the system .DLL a little easier. It uses the compiler front end to
parse
> the headerfiles and extract the function declarations. It uses an .INI
file to
> define the stack sizes of the parameters and generates a .LIB with the
proper @n
> decoration where possible.
>
> > Other things that will help a lot is just taking opportunities as they present themselves to spread the word about DMC/DMD, by posting about
it,
> > linking to it from web pages, asking people who release source libraries
to
> > support DMC, etc.
>
> Have done that where ever I could I think...
> Support for it on other sites would be great though.
> For one I have patched Codejock's Xtreme Toolkit so that it compiles with
DMC++.
>
> Jan
>
>