On 2021-01-11 10:14:54 Rony G. Flatscher wrote:
> On February 24th 2021, it will be seven (!) years since the last official
> release of ooRexx took place, believe it or not!
>
> People who do not follow this list or the ooRexx code updates on
> Sourceforge will think, that maintenance, let alone development, of ooRexx
> has ceased seven years ago! :(
>
> This puts pressure on those people in organisations/businesses who use
> Rexx/ooRexx but are faced with demands of replacements with more modern,
> maintained and continuously developed programming languages like Python,
> Ruby and the like.
>
> Also, people who suggest to allow usage of ooRexx in
> organisations/businesses will usually get turned down as ooRexx is outdated
> and not maintained, so why using it? Learning about a beta version does not
> help as everyone knows that beta means error-prone, unstable software and
> the like, and as a result organisations/businesses usually prohibit usage
> and deployment of beta software.
>
> As ooRexx 5.0 beta has been in an excellent condition for many years, it
> could have been released years ago! ooRexx 5.0 beta adds a wealth of great
> new features, in addition very notable speed improvements and fixes many
> bugs of the seven years old ooRexx 4.2, the last official release of
> ooRexx!
>
> As no show-stoppers are present I think that the current version of ooRexx
> 5.0 beta should be released ASAP as is. The only thing needed would be a
> new package that is declared to be the release package!
>
> Is there a will for a release? If so, can the release be done by February
> 24th 2021?
>
> ---rony
>
> P.S.: Also, once a release is done, I would suggest to make sure to create
> a yearly (!) release, even if they are only microreleases! This will signal
> ongoing maintenance and development to outsiders/users of ooRexx, which has
> been the case for all those past years (but lacking releases this was not
> communicated successfully to outsiders/users of ooRexx).
>
> P.P.S.: In today's world the release cycles are critical to public
> reception of the healthiness of (software) projects it seems, probably the
> main reason why Linux creates even twice a year a release, but also
> Java/OpenJDK and others.
Another reason that ooRexx will be viewed as outdated is that, unlike
other
popular scripting languages, it provides support only for 7-bit ASCII,
severely limiting its use globally.
Leslie
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