Lets not forget that for certain types of applications, rebol is far 
more productive and flexible than many other languages. Its simply 
efficient and very well thought out. I think many developers just like 
using it, and like myself dont mind contributing to the cause because 
rebol and its community has enabled us to do wonderful things. I 
personally look forward to the chance to contribute to R3 in the future, 
my way of giving back, and adding some great features that I think 
everyone will benefit from.

Godspeed RT!

---Ryan

Practical Productivity
707-245-8226

Alessandro Manotti wrote:
> Hello Gabriele, I agree with you: this topic is taking the light on a lot of
> things.
>
> I think this topic is taking on surface some other things related to Rebol
> that let me a little bit baffled:
>
> 1) it seems (but it is not clear) that there are only a few people that work
> on Rebol (you, Carl, and another couple of guys).
> 2) All Rebol developers do not work at full time to Rebol development.
> 3) It seems there are more information about the development plans of RT
> here in this topic than in any other place: it means, maybe, the
> communication between RT and other people (Rebol fans!) is not well
> performed.
> 4) It seems that there is not any official development plan. I think this
> could be a good method (well... not good... but acceptable) for Open Source
> / free apps (developed by the volunteers in their free-time), but this is
> not acceptable in a professional development. Yes, in fact, sometimes, we
> discuss here as if we are talking about free apps, but we should not forget
> we are talking about commercial application. Imagine that, several years
> ago, I bought a Command license for my company (they do not allowed me to
> buy further licenses since the development was stalled... that was the
> impression). Then I bought a personal license (View/Pro) for me.
>
> Again:we should not forget that from RT I do expect a commercial quality
> program, commercial quality upgrades, assistance, etc...
>
> Look at other programs like Real Basic, Runtime Revolution, 3D Game Studio
> (I use it for 3D, and it has an affordable price for an Indie developer,
> Beyond Virtual, etc....), etc... (I do stop here, but I could proceed with
> many other programs...). All these development tools, have regular upgrades,
> new milestone releases, etc... That's all.
> I want to highlight that I like Rebol, but I'm afraid that RT seems to
> manage it as a product created by some volunteers, not by a commercial
> company.
> During these days I was even thinking to offer me to help in Rebol
> development. But the problem is this:
>
> 1) Since Rebol is not free (and RT gains money from it), I cannot offer me
> as free-of-charge.
> 2) If I could work for free, mybe in the future, if Rebol developement will
> be stopped, I will remain with *NOTHING* in my hands, since it is not free.
> If I partecipate for free to develop a GPL (LGPL or similar) product, if the
> main development group will stop development, I could get the source code of
> the product self. In Rebol... no.
> Look at similar cases: Commodore Amiga (you know very well), OS/2, BeOS (do
> you know? It was really incredible and a revolutions OS, but it failed),
> several Smalltalk versions (Dolphin Smalltalk, IBM SmallTalk). More:
> Microsoft J++, Borland Kylix (sigh... I like Delphi!), etc....
>
> Don't forget: I talk in this way because I like Rebol, else I was not here
> to spend my time to talk about it! :-)
>
> Ciao Gabriele!
>
>
>
> On Nov 25, 2007 5:14 PM, Gabriele Santilli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
>   
>> 2007/11/24, Giuseppe Chillemi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>>
>>     
>>> The new VID is on only on Carl's mind
>>>       
>> That's not really correct. I think it's 90% done (though we're going
>> to re-evaluate the design soon, and I may need to rewrite some parts),
>> even though the remaining 10% is the one that takes the longest (the
>> details)... so it would probably need 3-4 weeks of work (which can
>> mean two months real time because I may also be doing other things in
>> the meantime, like protocols, testing, R/S on R3, and so on). (Keep in
>> mind that 90% required less than 3 weeks, done over about a month - we
>> started working on VID in mid July and I had to go back to Qtask in
>> mid August.)
>>
>>     
>>> In this situation Rebol3/Core will need at least 3 months to leave the
>>> pre-alpha stage and go alpha.
>>>       
>> That may be true as there are many things that still need to be done
>> (tasks etc), however most of these features are not that critical, so
>> you can call it alpha even if tasks are not 100% done and so on. I
>> think it already qualifies as "alpha" since you can already write
>> useful apps with it (and I did).
>>
>>     
>>> Then will come the time for the other
>>> protocols to be implemented and debugged. This mean another 5-7 months.
>>>       
>> It can be done in parallel. Carl works on the "kernel" (the actual
>> interpreter, the datatypes, etc.), I work on VID and protocols (with
>> many others contributing mezz code, eg. thru DevBase), Richard works
>> on View and so on.
>>
>>     
>>> Thinking in parallel, VID will be structured and engineered during this
>>> time. A first implementation of the new VID will start after core with
>>> protocols will go beta.
>>>       
>> That's not correct - we're at the second implementation already and
>> don't think the third will take much (I think the current code is
>> flexible enough for the changes Carl wants to make, so there's not
>> much to rewrite. It was asked that we have "css like skinning", and
>> although I don't think we need all the complexity of "css like", we
>> can do something like that by just using the way VID3 handles style
>> options - you can write   button "Click" options [rounding: 6]   for
>> example, so we can just make the options names more "css like" and
>> there's not much more code to write).
>>
>>     
>>> Should we think that 1 month is enough for a full GUI system ? No, it
>>>       
>> will
>>
>> No, about 2 are needed, but it might have been less if I was not
>> interrupted. Then of course we still have to refine the edges after
>> that, and maybe it will take 6 months or so to call it "release
>> candidate", but it's not that hard. It's REBOL we're talking about,
>> not Java. :)
>>
>>     
>>> 2010-2011 Seems the time-frame for the firsts maturity and usabilty of
>>> Rebol3 in big projects.
>>>       
>> It may be true that it will take a few years for it to be as mature as
>> R2 is; but, keep in mind R2 was done in like 6 months, and about one
>> year later we got View (2000). In 2001 I was already writing
>> commercial applications with it - some are still in use today even
>> though they run in View 1.2.10 or so. Even though RT may be much
>> smaller now, I think you are a bit too pessimistic. OTOH, since many
>> things will be left to the community, it's hard to predict when we'll
>> have a "critical mass" of modules and plugins available.
>>
>> Anyway, that was a good post, and I completely agree with the idea -
>> there's no need to wait for R3, and even if it's going to take some 3
>> years more, the world won't fall in the meantime.
>>
>> Regards,
>>    Gabriele.
>> --
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>>
>>
>>     
>
>
>   

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