[geeks] Oh my god...

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Friday, November 29, 2002 at 17:45:53 (-0500), Joshua D Boyd wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] Oh my god...
>
> On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 05:37:21PM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> 
> > What the hell's wrong with Smalltalk!?!?!?!?!?  :-)
> 
> OK, I'll acknoledge here that it is possible to use Squeak for such
> tasks, but Squeak does not make applications that look like they belong
> on the platform

Did I say "Squeak"????  no, it doesn't look like it!!!!  In fact it
seems I didn't specify any particular implementation.  :-)

You should actually try downloading and playing with one of the
commercial smalltalk implementations, such as the one actually used by
the bank I mentioned (IBM VisualAge, IIRC).

Besides, who the heck forced you to use the look and feel of Squeak?
You have the source -- all of it.  Do with it as you please!  Sheesh!
(even without modifying source the look & feel of "morphic" is pretty
damn maleable)

> So, sure there are other Smalltalks out there, like Cincom or Visual
> Age, but they cost large amounts of money.  Sure, they are free for
> personal use, but what about using for small commercial products?

Why don't _you_ actually read their licences?  They spell things out
pretty clearly.

> Visual Age is quite
> expensive, so that cost would need to be defrayed over a lot of clients,

As far as I understand plain VisualAge Smalltalk is *FREE* for _anyone_
to download.  You only have to pay for the "Enterprise" version.  That
means _anyone_ can download their own free copy -- i.e. their own
runtime for your application(s).  You do have to "register" to get your
first copy, but their license is explicitly a copyright license.  You
don't even have to agree to the early-access license for older versions.

Besides, if you're talking about small volume commercial products then
that's exactly what you have to do:  defray the cost over the number of
clients.

HOWEVER -- VisualAge is but one of at least three very mature and widely
used commercial implementations of smalltalk!  Get out of your box and
quit making assumptions that are flat out wrong.  :-)

For example ST/X (www.except.de) is now 100% free, including for
commercial use.  I believe it's even freely redistributable, meaning you
can hand out copies of it along with your application(s).

So, take care to understand the licensing of whatever you're looking at.
Copyright law is not the same as contract law.  If the implementation is
offered under copyright for anonymous download then anyone can download
their own free copy and they're free to make use of it in any way, just
like you can use a book in any way.  I.e. if you want to give free or
cheap applications to someone then they can download their own "free"
copy of the runtime environment.

As far as I can see only Cincom's VisualWorks license is a true contract
(you have to register to get the installer key) and its terms actually
attempt to prevent you and others from using applications developed
using the licensed software for commercial purposes.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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