Dear REBOL friends,
I guess I goofed! We've been working so hard on making new products and formulating
business strategies around here, that we've not paid any attention to our web page.
Last week, someone commented that we looked "dead" because our web page had not been
updated in over a month. I agreed... and decided to do something about it.
Yesterday, I thought I should let it be known that we are making great progress here
at REBOL HQ. Over the last month we've come a long way in our product development
efforts and in our business development plans. In fact, over the last month I hired a
great guy to help me run the company (which we'll be announcing soon) and there have
been several other important strategic developments (not all of which we can talk
about for a while).
Over the last week I've been spending my time in the rebcave writing REBOL/author
(man, you should see what a 35KB /View program can really do... very nice.) I came
out of the cave long enough to make that update to the web site, and today things have
gone crazy, not just on this list, but everywhere!
So, what about REBOL/Command? That's what you want to know, right?
There is both good news and bad news. The good news is that, yes, we do have /Command
out to a small group of beta testers and the feedback has been positive. The bad news
is that it runs on only a few platforms at this time, and we want to put more features
into it before we release it to a larger group.
Currently, the beta release of /Command has ODBC, external library (DLL) calls, and
shell command access. But, I thought you wouldn't want to hear from us until we also
had encryption, asynchronous messaging, network service management, full XML support,
modules (namespaces), on-demand component loading, tasking/threading, etc. So, we
didn't make a big deal out of the beta 1 release.
Of course, I forgot about that yesterday and blurted out that it was in beta, and now
you want to try it. I can't blame you. I would too!
So, what now?
We don't want to do an open beta test of /Command because it will become too crazy,
and we'll be overloaded. Bo and his wife just had a baby girl (Congratulations Bo!),
so he's not around, and Scott is doing three jobs at the same time, just as Jim,
Sterling, Jeff, and Holger are trying to write several new products at the same time,
and Erin just completed a couple new chapters for the manual, and Danny is getting you
four new REBOL books from some big book publishers, and the executive crew has put
together a new business plan, and we're moving into a larger building next week, but
the network connection isn't ready, and whew, that's a lot going on. <grin> But this
is fun. I love this pace. It feels like the old Amiga startup days. We're rocking
and rolling.
So, here's my suggestion. I have to talk to Dan about it, but, if you really want to
test /Command beta 1, and you can:
1. test it with an actual database (using ODBC),
2. test the external library and shell calls,
3. not just report bugs, but suggest about how they might be fixed,
4. keep it strictly confidential and to yourself,
5. and, you do not care that it only runs on a few platforms right now,
then we could send you a copy... after Dan approves it. But remember, /Command will
be released as a commercial product and, because of the features it supports, it is
not intended to be platform independent (like /Core is).
If you agree to this, then send [EMAIL PROTECTED] an email telling him what kind of
project you are doing, and he will get back to you.
Do not worry if Dan says no. As we add more features to /Command, we'll need more
beta testers. Right now we don't have the staff to keep up with the demand and
feedback. (Although, we do plan on expanding our staff in a couple months, so if
you're looking for a new job...)
So that's the plan.
Keep on rebolling,
Carl Sassenrath
REBOL/Founder
