In an earlier thread Richard Owlette wrote:

<< Yeah *BUT*
Doty and Coughlin demand source be published if it is claimed that Forth
code is "shareable". That code is proprietary is irrelevant to them. The
exist in an academic fantasy land. Lots of programmers publish code in
XYZ because their goal is proving a point and publishing allows others
to *DUPLICATE* their work. Seems Forth gets used where goal is
COMPETITIVE COMMERCIAL advantage. >>

While I can certainly see sharing code to be generally advantageous to the
Forth (or any other language)programming community, notwithstanding examples
like Linux, I have some difficulty seeing how it could work well in
practice. The problem with copyright is that , thanks in part to Disney,
copyright (which costs the holder nothing) now extends to the heirs and
succesors of the original copyright holder for something like 70 years.
Compare that to a patent that can cost tens of thousands of dollars (in each
jurisdiction) and lasts for only 20 years from date of application.

One problem I see is ownership. Where the code is written by a hobbiest,
there is clearly no issue with ownership of the code being copylefted.
However, most software is written either by wage-slaves...

Robert Miller wrote:

"John Doty" whispertel.LoseTheH.net> wrote in message
news:BuCdnYeDn_y-ck_anZ2dnUVZ_gednZ2d@wispertel.com...

This isn't an area where I have any experience. I wasn't actually arguing
against code sharing I was questioning how and why it works. For hobbiests,
there is peer recognition and the obvious saving of not having to reinvent
the wheel. The latter is a possible motive for businesses to participate,
but there are costs and risks involved. How much of the copyleft c/c++ code
for eg. has businesses as the proprietor? How much is individuals and to
what extend did those individuals have the right to release it? Is
software sharing like music sharing where the people doing the sharing are
not the creators or copyright owners?

In any event, what has the source language got to do with it? You seem to
be critical of the Forth community for not sharing. What is unique about
Forth that would discourage sharing?

Bob

Robert Miller wrote:

I don't know of a percentage, but it's one model. Consider Ghostscript:
it's released under the GPL, but it's owned by a company that, since it
holds all of the rights, can also license it under any other terms it
wishes, and make money that way. The GPL release gets them visibility
and lots of (free!) field testing.

On Mar 9, 11:51 am, John Doty whispertel.LoseTheH.net> wrote:
[snip]

The traditional Forth approach is to solve specific problems by
extending a Forth into a custom proprietary interpreter targeted at
that specific problem. The Forth approach is not about producing
generic solutions for generic problems. Why would it be surprising
that most Forth code is proprietary?

John Doty wrote:

...

It isn't language-dependent in a technical sense, but in a cultural
sense. Forth is most popular in commercial situations because that's
where its advantages are most visible. It is less popular in academic
settings where a lot of publishing goes on. Also, for many years, folks
in the Forth community would rather write Yet Another Forth and publish
that than publish application code. So, cultural issues on both sides.

Cheers,
Elizabeth

On Sat, 8 Mar 2008, Mark W. Humphries wrote:

In article ,
Robert Miller compmore.net> wrote:

"Elizabeth D Rather" forth.com> wrote in message
news:13t733fj46u2sd8@news.supernews.com...

Would I be correct in assuming that you are referring to embedded systems
based on SwiftX Forth here?

"Albert van der Horst" wrote in message
news:jxgwk9.omb@spenarnc.xs4all.nl...