Really interesting news. I was curious for some history and the reason for the open sourcing, since back in 2007 Andy Bower said [1] "It is with great regret and more than a touch of sadness that I have to announce that Blair and I have made the decision to stop selling and developing Dolphin Smalltalk. We will continue to distribute the free version of Dolphin X6 indefinitely but, as from today, we will not be selling the Professional version. [...] There will no doubt be a number of you who would suggest that we Open Source Dolphin. Of course, you are free harbour such opinions and to discuss the idea on the newsgroup but please do not expect us to be persuaded. It simply will not happen! Both Blair and I dislike the Open Source movement intensely and we would rather see Dolphin gradually disappear into the sands of time than instantly lose all commercial value in one fell swoop."
but then even Microsoft has significantly changed its stance on open source [2]. It seems there was initial discussion in Feb 2014 of pledges to open source Dolphin [3], followed by ObjectArts proposal July 2014 for $10-$15k crowd-funding [4], but in the end it seems they bypassed that and Dec 2014 went straight to an MIT release [5]. I don't think we should take this as an opportunity to simply raid their coffers and ideally aim there would be some mutual beneficial to reward their move to open source. As I understand it, Dolphin is Microsoft only but using 32-bit Win32 API rather than .NET, although it can run under Wine[6], so Pharo has some advantages there - particularly considering the mobile arena. I doubt its practical to merge the two products since I *guess* much of Dolphin's attractiveness is its tight coupling to Microsoft, but since they've got this "ph" in their name, I can't help imagining a product with 64-bit Cog-Spur-Sista + lower level Pharo infrastructure + Dolphin GUI - that might be named "Dolpharo" ;) cheers -ben [1] http://forum.world.st/Terrible-News-Dolphin-is-Dying-td1408648.html [2] https://redmondmag.com/articles/2015/09/01/changing--dna.aspx [3] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin/open$20source/comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin/BMkKJ5bNxzQ/cFAm-mpTUgkJ [4] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin/0EIhRyLBwa4/2weQUjDqf9YJ [5] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin/YOxRJ_Q9BKo/E8WEZ-cXCAAJ [6] http://www.object-arts.com/blog/files/904294e27cec4b8dff96422f3197f603-5.html On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 11:26 PM, Serge Stinckwich <[email protected]> wrote: > I dunno if they will be any impact on Pharo, because having a software > open-source is great, but you also need > a benevolent dictator and a community to give a direction ;-) > > If the licence is MIT, this is great, because Pharo could reuse some > parts of Dolphin Smalltalk without any problems. > > Regards, > > On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 12:57 PM, Saša Janiška <[email protected]> wrote: >> ...with MIT license, so I wonder if that will have some impact on >> further development of Pharo? >> >> Iirc, Dolphin can produce stand-alone Windows executable, but maybe >> something else can be utilized as well? >> >> Here is the link with: http://object-arts.com/gettingstarted.html >> >> Sincerely, >> Gour >> >> -- >> The humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal >> vision a learned and gentle brāhmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog >> and a dog-eater. >> >> >> >> >> > > > > -- > Serge Stinckwich > UCBN & UMI UMMISCO 209 (IRD/UPMC) > Every DSL ends up being Smalltalk > http://www.doesnotunderstand.org/ >
