[self-interest] Self on Linux (was: Self 4.1)

Jecel Assumpcao Jr jecel at merlintec.com
Tue Nov 16 23:11:09 UTC 1999


thorsten.dittmar at daedalos.com wrote:
> 
> stefan matthias aust wrote: 
> > At OOPSLA, I heard the rumor that there's a company actually interested in
> > porting SELF for Windows and/or Linux.

> Hi, as you know
> ;-) it is not only a rumor. We are interested in a Self port to Linux
> (in the moment not Win NT). We want to have a closer look at Self. We
> are currently looking for a language and development environment that
> we can use to write an "ideal" multiuser ide.

I would say that the current "Kansas" GUI in Self is an excelent
start. In the Squeak mailing list, Alan Kay said that John Maloney
felt "relieved" to go back to the traditional browsers in Smalltalk.
My experience is the exact opposite - after programming in Squeak
for a while it is always pure joy to be back in Self. It is a
matter of taste, I guess.

> There are a lot of
> things in Self that makes quite interesting for us. So right now we
> try to find out what we must do to evaluate Self.

The best thing is to try it out on a high end Sparcstation. I
haven't seen it on the Mac yet (but intend to really soon).

> Maybe it is cheaper
> to port it to Linux instead of buy a lot of new machines.

Yes - that is the best option. But it is much harder to do the
port if you don't have access to a working version (which is
the case of some people on the list who have worked on a port
so far).

> If
> everything works fine we will invest some money in our Self
> development, but this is not sure now. We will have a lot of work to
> do before we can be sure that Self is the right language for our
> plans. For example our lawyer will contact Sun (in person David and
> his chief) to find out, if there are some foot traps for us in the
> license or not.

It just says:

   LICENSE:

   You may use the software internally, modify it, make
   copies and distribute the software to third parties,
   including redistribution for profit, provided each copy
   of the software you make contains the copyright notice
   set forth above, the disclaimer below, and the authorship
   attribution below.

I have looked at all the Open Source licenses out there and this
is probably the simplest and least ambiguous of all (close to
the BSD one).

> And BTW there are also a lot of technical questions
> and we must find answers for this stuff.... so we will see cu

Here is the perfect place for it!

-- Jecel



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