Open Clean Source

[Hendrik Tews]

Hi,

Ana Maria Abrao writes:
   From: ana@ufu.br (Ana Maria Abrao)
   Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 16:11:09 -0200
   Subject: Re: [Re: Open Clean Source]

   Let's consider ML. We will not speak about OCAML, because we don't
   know the compiler (we never could make it work). Let's talk about
   SML/NJ and Harlequin. They do have a deserved reputation for
   being slow. These two compilers generate code which is about
   four times slower than the code generated by gcc.
   
This is not true. There exist case studies, where sml/nj
outperforms gnu c++, eg.
http://www.azstarnet.com/~dmcclain/LanguageStudy.html.

And further I installed ocaml about twenty times now and it
always compiled out of the box!

   Haskell is another story. There is a joke going around that
   you need an installed Haskell compiler to compile part of the

Well I don't have experience with Haskell, but in comparison with
your statement about ocaml I guess Haskell can be installed
following a simple installation script. 
;-)

   We think that the published source of Haskell is almost
   as difficult to decifer as that. Since we don't have
   12 years, we are not interested.
  
There is a considerable amount of wrong argumentation here: Ok,
you find Haskell sources difficult to read, but:

(1) This does not imply, that they are difficult to read for
other people.

(2) Even if (1) were true, it would not imply, that the published
sources of Haskell were of no use. 

(3) And even if the published sources were of no use, this is no
argument against publishing the sources. 

So finally the fact that you are not interested in the Haskell
sources is IMO completely irrelevant for the question of
publishing the clean source code or not. 

   > Please explain how anyone could _force_ them to??? 
   
   Well, the Clean team has commited itself to give us support.
   Then, they are forced by their own commitment. I suppose that
   people who ask for the source want somebody to provide support.

This is another example of strange argumentation. To close your
chain, you insert one of your believes or fears, instead of an
argument. If you want, that your arguments count, you should give
examples from the real world instead your believes. There are
thousands of projects which published their source code. But no
one has heard of one where your fears and believes were reality.

I have never met anyone who downloaded the sources, because he
wanted support. In fact it is the other way round: people who
want support do not download the sources. They buy a product
instead. 

   Clean team is having a hard time in providing support for
   their libraries and language. 

Exactly. If they would release the sources, other people would
port the libraries and IDE and the clean team could concentrate
on the important things: developing the language. 

I also believe that commercial interests would rather suggest to
release the clean sources. For making profit it does not count if
you sell a compiler or the support. What counts are number of
people buying it. And an open clean would definitely increase the
number of users. Non of those companies selling Linux staff or
commercial latex could make their living today if the sources were
not released in the past.


Bye,

Hendrik

=================================================================
Hendrik Tews     PhD student  in theoretical computer science
                 at Dresden University of Technology, Germany

e-mail:    	 tews@cs.kun.nl or tews@tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de
www:       	 http://home.pages.de/~tews/
pgp key:         http://home.pages.de/~tews/pgpkey.asc
=================================================================