World: r3wp

So, is there a timeframe to declare the current development method 
a failure ??

Or do we just carry on steaming ahead .. irregardless of outcome 
measures?

I still look into R2 Desktop contest demos, especially to Cyphre's 
:-) There's still some potential for eye-candy, though VID does not 
look professional enough anymore. And some other mobile UIs might 
be also using advanced techniques (not sure about 3D, but some transition 
effects are simply avesome)

Graham - to whom do you want to claim the failure? Carl is not here 
to listen, and even if he would be here, I doubt he would change 
his mind about fully open-sourcing R3, although he might be the only 
one, who is not able to see the benefits ...

Using Rebol you can do quickly any UI. Even if you do hardcoded UI 
for each mini app.

Well I guess no one has seen the business plan .. so without that 
we can't judge on what basis we are succeeding or failing

Cyphre .. I'm sure that that is correct .. except the "you" is not 
:)

Well, everything is all about your abilities. If you want to do a 
commercial product you can't make alone(from any reason) then use 
some other free work or pay anoyne who'll do it for you.

This is true .. but I'm talking about making Rebol available to a 
broadbase of developers

Making it so that only a few can use it to the full is IMHO pointless

It is not the way to achieve a broad user base

it's just a question of numbers .. the more users you have, the more 
expert users you will also have.

Look at the Unity3D case. Few years ago it was small team of people. 
Now it has really big community of developers who *pay* for their 
products. So it is not about being open or closed source. It's about 
usefulness.

If you know there is a big market and you just need really good tool 
why you wouldn't buy it for reasonable price?

I'm sure that there are multiple ways to do this .. just the one 
we are using doesn't seem to be it

Any business plan needs to be checked against the aims and progress 
...

I guess the compelling proposition with unity3d is the create 3d 
game on multiple platforms?

What exactly is the Unique Selling Proposition for R3 ??

Cyphre - we would buy R3 for a reasonable price. Make a 300 USD SDK 
kit for Android, and I am fine with that.

I bought IOS, two Command sets for multiple platforms, /Pro

Pekr, I don't think that is viable anymore ..

No..this was just a comparison. Such R3 based tool doesn't need to 
have anything with 3D...it just have to be useful. If you pick just 
a few pltforms/markets that makes it useful and do the ports you 
have very high chance it will save other developers time and they'll 
buy it.

Maybe if you can be first to market with a new tool .. but we don't 
have that

Graham - why not? Have you ever worked with embedded SW? Those kits 
might cost much more. But - if you think it is not viable to extend 
an user base, then you are right. Carl would be better off with fully 
opensourcing R3, while still keeping his hand upon the direction 
of development, and benefiting from getting more new ppl onboard, 
some contractual work for special modules, etc.

I agree

Pekr, thats exactly what I mean..I wouldn't sell R3 (nor I can :)) 
I'd seell IPhone/Wii/Android/whatewermakessense kit for small apps 
that will work on all the OSes.

we still need one thing though - Carl ...

The hostkit was supposed to free us from relying on Carl so he could 
work on other stuff .. but that hasn't happened

users can't even update the hostkit docs so others can benefit from 
their learning

The hoskit freed us..we just need more :)

in some cases half a pie is not good enough

furthermore, we don't know how to work all together.

We rely too much on Carl to get organized

organised??

coordinate team work

I guess any team work projects have not registered in my consciousness

Unity3D is a mixed license product too. Developers pay for the closed-source 
portions.

It's one of the only open source business plans that works nowadays. 
Pure open source usually generates no income for the creators and 
contributors of a project.

To be fair, with Unity3D the core is open and the outer layers are 
closed. Perhaps REBOL is getting it backwards.

BrianH, there are software companies that provide fully open sourced 
solutions while charging only for training/support, and this business 
model seems to work well. See:
http://www.appcelerator.com
http://www.sencha.com(ExtJs creators)

Agreed, you have to look at the community as a whole, not just a 
single company. In those cases, the closed outer layer is written 
by other companies and the inner core programmers are supported through 
patronage (training/support models are variants on patronage). Most 
open source code is supported either by patronage, by selling closed 
addons, or is just a hobby/charity.

And even charities have to be supported through patronage if they 
want to get large-scale work done.

RMA's GUI is an open core supported by closed apps written on it, 
which is where it's funding comes from. They make money from the 
closed portions, not the open parts.

For that matter, even closed source freeware follows the same model: 
Charity, freemium or donation/support/training.

Guys, products are not going to be developed by keeping on talking 
about them. You have to sit down and do them

As Cyphre says, it all depends on your abilities. So I can understand 
that many people still feel powerless in the R3 situation, but that's 
the wrong way to approach it. You have to determine what you can 
do already and just do it

been there, done that, and no satisfaction

No products, then

STEEVE +100 but STEEVE clearly RMA don't want to work with us they 
want to start their business  using us as publicity and free testing 
ground ... you can't mixe free and not free that way ... If you do 
a foundation that gather  donations and reparts those donations to 
the main "contributors" according to their contribution then it's 
a totally different situation than what is made actually. First the 
source code produced and paid by the foundation belongs to the foundation. 
They don't belong to an obscure commercial entity ( I'm sure Robert 
cyphre and the other has the best volunty in the world and only good 
intention but the way it's done only  make me believe they want to 
use us to get money on our back one way or another)

but steeve thing is ALL pass by Carl so one way or another if you 
want your work to be merged to the official distribution and shared 
then you have to comply with the expectations of Carl  somehow and 
 have him merging your release to his and vise and versa ...