Open Clean Source

[Antonio Eduardo Costa Pereira]

OLIVIER LEFEVRE wrote:
 
> 
> > Our suggestion is that they choose a small number of
> > partners, and perform a transference of technology to them.
> 
> And how is that incompatible with a source release?
> 

It isn't. I only fear that Clean team reach the conclusion
that source release will solve their  problem of 
Clean's lack of back up support. It won't. They may
release their source or not, according to their best 
(commertial) interests. In any case, they must find
a back up support scheme. It is too risky to release the
source code, and wait until back up support arises from
a curious (and with lots of time) implementor. 
Nevertheless, I must agree with you that such a thing
did happen at least once (with Linux).

> Full bore attack on most extant FPL implementations...

Neither Alex nor I wanted to attack other FPL implementations.
I am badly in need of a good Scheme implementation (I have a lot
of programs in Scheme). I also have quite a few programs in SML.
I spend a lot of time testing Harlequin's SML, and asking them
to improve the performance of their compiler (I am one of their
beta testers). I hope that SML becomes faster than Clean. I
don't see any technical reason for it to be much slower. 
People at Harlequin concur. 

> But I will note that even you can envision some good coming out of
> a source release, namely other implementor borrowing techniques
> from Clean and lifting the entire field. Isn't that something we
> should wish for?

Sure! However, I am not certain whether Clean team wants to lift
the competition. You know, they have a comercial outlet (Hilt).
If they want to help us (Scheme and SML programmers) that
would be nice of their part, but I insist: Their prime obligation
is with the Clean community, people like Ana who programs only in
Clean (as for myself, I cannot do without a good side effect
:=  set!  assertz). I hope that they will give them back up support.
If Clean disappear, Ana will be have to dedicate full time
to her Aikido academy :)

Eduardo Costa.