"Matthew PATTISON" <mfp / students.cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:

> > > I'd be interested in doing two things: 1.) Helping to build a Ruby
IDE;
> > and
> > > 2.) Creating a GUI widget library for Ruby based on the CLX library.
Both
> > > the IDE and the GUI library would work on both Win32 and Linux,
assuming
> > of
> > > course that Borland delivers on this very interesting concept.
> >
> > this sound quite interesting, but one question.:
> > will CLX open source and when which license will be used?????
> > I heard something about making it open source , but I do not
> > know for sure.
> See www.borland.com/kylix for details, but quoting a Nov 13 article
> refereneced on that page:
>
> ...CLX, the underlying component library, will be released under a
> dual license, allowing open source developers to code under the GPL or
> commercial developers to purchase a commercial license.
>
> also:
>
> ...earlier reports elsewhere that the Kylix IDE itself would be released
as
> open source software are flatly wrong.
>
> I presume that means that whilst the Kylix IDE will not be open source,
CLX
> will be.

Roughly speaking (i.e. leaving out various differentiating qualifications),
these sorts of things are major reasons why Qt never caught on as the
successor to Tk, and were a big stimulus (among other things) for developing
GTK+, reviving wxWindows (and probably for developing FOX too for that
matter).

Not sticking with open source GUI extensions creates (in many cases) lots of
practical (economic, legal, deployment, managerial permission) problems for
(many) users/developers of <language>/<GUI>.

I'm all for people making money off of software--indeed, I hope that people
figure out how to make tons of money off of Ruby software so as to increase
the incentives for maximum world-wide use, and to draw maximum resources
into developing "Ruby/CPAN". But (IMHO) the Ruby community would
(eventually) be (much) better off in the overall average long run by
encouraging "2-nd order" or "Linux-style" profiteering on products and
services derived from a common open source core, especially in connection
with whatever becomes its mainstream, available out-of-the-box GUI(s).

Conrad