[self-interest] Re: squeakifying? (was: licenses and working together)

[Gordon Cichon]

On Thu, 18 Nov 1999, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
> > It would be a nice thing to "squeakify" Self, but please correct
> > me if I'm wrong, a squeakified Self would run so slowly that the
> > UI would be completely unuseable.
> I don't know what you mean by "squeakify". If you mean to an
> interpreter in Self and translate it to C, you are right. It
> would be much worse than Squeak, in fact, unless we added some
> bytecodes or did a compilation to threaded code.

I think, the biggest adavantage of a Self interpreter would be
that Self would simply run in the first place. We could then
put a sophisticated compiler framework on top of it which could
bootstrap itself using this interpreter.

> I want a NIC in Self that spits out X86 instructions. We can
> always worry about PPC/Sparc/ARM/MIPS at some unspecified date
> in the future :-)

That's exaclty what I wanted to accomplish in Self for Linux. :-)

> > I think, Smalltalk could have played the role that Windows plays
> > today, i.e. the integrating framework for different applications
> > that run on a virtual machine if ParcPlace hadn't been so jealous
> > about its licensing policy.
> There was Smalltalk/V (16 bit DOS) and the Tektronix 4004 ($15K).
> And I feel guilty about this as well since we could have finished
> the Merlin 2 by the end of 1987.

;-)

> > If they had sold Smalltalk-80 for 50
> > bugs, people would have used it, just like they used Windows. 
> No, Windows has much more than 50 *bugs* :-) :-)

I was meaning Smalltalk for $50. Preinstalled, and with a word
processor. That could have killed Windows.

> > But
> > that opportunity is over for a long time already.
> Linux proved that the OS wars can be restarted after everyone
> is sure they are dead.

The difference with Linux is the _LICENSE_, not the technology.

Gordon.