[Fresco-devel] Re: ACE

> Ah, I can see what you're saying.  I'm not convinced, though, largely
> because 1) there are component technologies that have been used with
> at least somewhat successful; certainly Windows, KDE, GNOME, and
> Mozilla are examples of this, and 2) you don't give any examples of
> open-source projects "forever forking" in response to such
> technologies;

It's not a question of forking in response to them, but in spite of
them.  Components were supposed to marry code from various
parties to make building software systems easier.  That promise has
never been fulfilled.  Otherwise we would see open source folks
cooperating a lot more (on the basis of IDLs).

The examples you cite all involve single groups.  So they do not fit
this argument.  Code interoperability within a single development
group hardly needs an IDL.  The IDL problem is getting code
from different groups to interoperate.  Note how Fresco, while
using an IDL, fails to incorporate *any* IDL components from third
parties. (Correct me if that impression is wrong.)

The examples I gave were Fresco/ACE and Microsoft migrating to .NET.
If you want more, let me offer this insight.  Has it ever struck you
that hundreds of open source projects exist in pre-alpha or alpha
stages, many of them doing the same things, with very few in mature
development?  Just browse SourceForge to see what I mean.  (There is
another concrete example:  poll SourceForge project version numbers.)

If IDL components were as attractive as originally promised, then we
should see instead a snowball effect.  Each succeeding generation of
code could build on the components of the previous one.  I don't see
that happening.

The example I gave about forever forking was Prague, which someone
on this very list admitted duplicated work even when it was first
under development.

ACE is at least as old as Prague, so it's possible that Prague folks
might have contributed back then.  In any case, my point is that if
components had ever worked, Prague originators would not have felt the
same temptation to fork away from the rest of the open source world
-- because IDL components would have made integration with external
projects much easier.

Still I do not advocate abandonment of IDLs.  I advocate that people
who use them should try harder to live up to their promise by actually
integrating each other's code (instead of duplicating it).

> Well, if you're trying to convince your managers to let you work on
> Fresco, by all means, we're short on coders.  But again, you have to
> be more concrete

I don't know how to be more concrete than by saying what I've said.
I've offered multiple examples of the pitfalls that business faces
in using LGPL code.

Your argument is that Fresco does things that nobody will want or need
to change, and that if I understood Fresco better, then I would
recognize this fact.  However this "fact" is something no one can
prophecy, any better than one can prophecy the life cycle of an open
source project.

I've also offered a concrete alternative, the wxWindows license which
is LGPL with a commercial exception for binary distribution.

Regards,
Mark

P.S.
Take a look at this very hopeful link:
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE_wrappers/docs/ACE-subsets.html