I do enjoy the diversity of opinions and the glimpses of personalities that occur in the give and take on this issue. And I do not think bad of anyone for their position but it is surprising how different they can be. I would think we would want to give the source code to anyone who would want to look at it on a silver plater and allow them to do anything they would want with it in the hopes that Wolfgang Lenerz could merge the good stuff into an ever improving core operating system that is predictable and documented. Then hardware and software developers would really have something to work with.
I bet 90% of us have already given our donation to TT for SMSQ so what more is there to give. He has been paid for his work. Do we have to keep buying it over and over or are we renting it? Unless there is some unforeseen demand for SMSQ that draws in new users there will be no more new buyers of SMSQ. In the past some of the most talented contributors have refused to participate in the SMSQ side of things precisely because of its closed nature and we have a fragmented community. Now we might lose another batch of enthusiasts who want to do good things for the QL. This license is strange and we do not need that. If I were a developer I would not participate. I would not mind giving my work away free to help the QL community but I would resent like hell its inclusion in SMSQ under the proposed agreement. The core system needs to be really free and open. The software developers who want to make money write programs we want that run on that core system. The traders stock the software for us to buy and add value to the core operating system that we will buy. There is no way around the fact that this is a hobby system and making much money is not possible. I do wish Quanta would take up this issue in a big way as they should be unbiased and have some influence. I realize there are limits depending on what TT is willing to do but I don't think this has been designed to get near the benefits possible. And I really don't care whether the core system is SMSQ or Minerva. I just want to see an open core system. This does seem to be a rare crossroad where we could vastly improve our future or continue on the same slow fragmented decline. -- Bill
