Wednesday, April 22, 1998

Sunday in Vancouver: Frontier User's Group Meeting.

SJ Merc and MacInTouch on the Apple Shareholder Meeting.

Mail Starting 4/23/98.

Slashdot.org is hosting a discussion of KYEOTP. Here's my response to the comments I just read on the slashdot.org site.

Scott Rosenberg, on Salon, suggests that sooner or later Microsoft is going to have to look at releasing the source for Windows.

To people who believe that open source is a panacea, I have a bunch of experience here, predating the current euphoria.

Frontier SDK is open source. Some parts of it gained traction, but much of it was ignored. We've stopped updating it, and nothing's happening, as far as I know.

In January 1996 we released the source to MacBird Runtime, hoping to ignite a move towards real graphic user interfaces on the web. Nothing happened. It was never ported, and no bug fixes were ever provided by non-paid employees.

In 1997, I looked on the web for base64 code that worked with handles not files. Finding none, I adapted existing implementations and released the source. This one worked, sort of. It was ported to HyperCard. Has anyone else used the code? I don't know.

My conclusion, like all the over-hyped manufactured "trends" of the software industry, there's some value in open source, but the press is oversimplifying it, going for the dramatic story, and as usual, the leaders are sucking it for all it's worth.

The real revolution will be open minds, not open source.

The pokey.org controversy is over, Chris can keep his domain name. At the same time, a court ruling broadens the rights of trademark holders. The Internet is changing the legal system here.