REBOL inside LInux distributions

[carloslorenz]

I guess REBOL Technologies could have a great chance to see their products much more used around the world if REBOL/Core and REBOL/View could be regular packages of Linux distributions.

Here in Brazil, lots of people are moving their desktop OS from Windows XP to Linux because of the great gonvernment support on Free Software (see http://www.softwarelivre.org.br).

These people do not know REBOL but they start writting Python programs, because Python comes with Linux.

There are very good Linux distributions in Brazil such as Conectiva http://www.conectiva.com.br [
and Kurumin http://www.kurumin.com.br that could bring REBOL to the people.

Of course in US and Europe and other parts of the world the scenario is the same so why RT people do not think about it?

[CarlRead]

Core was on a distribution of Red Hat quite a while back, but for whatever reason, it or View hasn't been on Linux distributions since.  (As far as I know.)

My feeling would be that unless REBOL goes open-source it won't ever be a good fit for Linux distributions.  Pity.

[Guest_rebolnuts]

Red hat can be distributed by anybody no ? So why wouldn't be any need that rebol goes open source: it can just be packaged with RED hat per se.

[G]

And what if OpenBSD (to be released next week) contained rebol?

[CarlRead]

Open-sourcers tend to say "I don't want no stinking propriety software on my machine", and that extends to their Linux distributions.  REBOL's closed-source, hence it's an unknown, hence it'd look out of place if not downright suspicious if it was the only closed-source bit of software in a distro.

[Guest]

Have there been any discussions about making REBOL/Core open source?

Are there any open source REBOL clones out there?

I can't help but notice that these forums are not very active...  Maybe some Open Source distribution would revitalize the REBOL community.

[CarlRead]

These forums are not the primary way REBOL coders communicate, which is why they don't seem too active.  I gather the REBOL World on AltMe (see: http://www.altme.com/ ) is the most active place, (I don't use it so can't really say), with the official REBOL mailing list  (see: http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-index.r ) being the other prime means of communication.

As to open-sourcing REBOL, look under "O" in the mailing list archive for a couple of threads on the subject, plus these two posts by Carl Sassenrath to his blog...

http://www.rebol.net/blog/carl-041004.html#section-2

http://www.rebol.net/blog/carl-041011.html#section-13

may be of interest to you as well.

There's an attempt at a clone (here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/r-sharp ) but I suspect the project's stalled - just two developers with the last file released on September 8, 2003.
 

[Guest]

The problem is that languages are fundamentally different than other technologies.  It is much easier to switch to a new editor, email program, or web browser, than it is to switch to a new programming language.  I suspect that most Linux users wouldn't like the idea of trusting the future of their applications to the good will of Rebol Technologies.  Especially if they are writing Open Source software, they will want to build it on an Open Source base.  This sort of thing can get a language lots of exposure, like what Zope did for Python.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the only people who will appreciate the power of dialecting without experiencing it are Lisp hackers, and they already have clisp, cmucl, and sbcl.  Most Perl or Python programmers won't see the advantage in Rebol unless they are able to try it out, and they won't see the point in doing that unless it is Open Source.  The Lisp hackers already have macros and Open Source implementations.

If we don't steal programmers from other languages, the other option is to get new programmers by having Rebol be their first language.  How can this be accomplished?  Get CS departments to use it (Pascal, Scheme)?  Create lots of hype in the media (Java)?  Have it be the only language that comes with their new computer (old BASIC)?

Where are we supposed to find new Rebol programmers?