Hi guys!
(cc:d to Stephen since he should be able to answer some questions)
Ok, we are discussing the Squeak-L, Debian etc.
Stephen, I thought (from discussing this with a Debian friend) that the main problem with getting Squeak into Debian was related to the export restrictions, but that may have been wrong(?). Having read up a bit on your postings to linux.debian.legal it seems that it was a combination of:
- the indemnification stuff - fonts - publishing of base modifications
First of all - the fontproblem is solvable and/or not a problem. StableSqueak has replaced them so that is one simple way out. And then it may be a non-issue altogether: http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1849
Regarding the publishing of base modifications, I am not sure what Debian's problem is/was?
I also saw your posting:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Debian+Squeak&hl=en&rnum=1&sel... m-0000ML-0W%40anchor-post-32.mail.demon.net
And you also wrote somewhere else that:
A similar clause in the Squeak license was enough to prevent me from packaging it as Apple confirmed to me that it did indeed mean that if a Debian user sued them then Debian could theoretically be liable to pay any legal fees and damages. You need to have this clarified.
That does sound as "the killer" - also read more below. Andrew?
John Hinsley jhinsley@telinco.co.uk wrote:
Duane Maxwell wrote:
On Thursday, October 25, 2001 6:21 PM, Andrew C. Greenberg wrote
On Thursday, October 25, 2001, at 08:19 PM, Lex Spoon wrote:
The main problem Debian has with Squeak-L is the indemnification clause, not the "non-free" parts. Would you not be worried yourself about agreeing to such a clause?
No. I would expect anybody who let me play with their code for free, so that I was free to do anything I wanted to do with it -- including using it to cause damage or infringe, would expect me to hold them harmless when THEY got sued for MY conduct.
I agree completely. You often hear the OSS community whining about how some software house should release their abandoned code base as OSS (cf. BeOS, Amiga, OpenMail, etc.) . In today's litigious environment, no sane company would do so unless they were able to at least raise some indemnification barrier to protect them, so I would expect clauses like this one, and ones that are more or less required by XYZ country's export restrictions to be pretty much standard in anything that somehow manages to get released.
Now, perish the tort ;-) I don't want to get involved in arguments with lawyers, but the GPL states:
If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
(Which might cover the export restriction stuff)
This is interesting. I had missed that in the GPL.
But still Squeak-L doesn't talk about "patents or by copyrighted interfaces" - it simply says that countries in some way banned by the US is a no no.
and
BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM ``AS IS'' WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
Which seems to me to cover the indemnity stuff adequately.
At least we could perhaps sortof "settle" on why Debian is not doable so that we at least know why we can't bang on Debian's door anymore.
regards, Göran
PS. Sorry for continuing the thread... :-) DS
On Friday 26 Oct 2001 10:15 am, goran.hultgren@bluefish.se wrote: [sorry for lack of snippage, I am not as up to date as I should be so I wasn't sure what should be snipped]
Hi guys!
(cc:d to Stephen since he should be able to answer some questions)
Ok, we are discussing the Squeak-L, Debian etc.
Stephen, I thought (from discussing this with a Debian friend) that the main problem with getting Squeak into Debian was related to the export restrictions, but that may have been wrong(?). Having read up a bit on your postings to linux.debian.legal it seems that it was a combination of:
- the indemnification stuff
- fonts
- publishing of base modifications
Neither the fonts nor the export restrictions are an insurmountable barrier. The indemnification clause is however.
First of all - the fontproblem is solvable and/or not a problem. StableSqueak has replaced them so that is one simple way out. And then it may be a non-issue altogether: http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1849
Regarding the publishing of base modifications, I am not sure what Debian's problem is/was?
We don't have a problem with that really. The indemnification is the only thing that prevents it from being in the distribution AFAIK (although the other concerns you mention would mean we would have to distribute it as non-free and non-US)
I also saw your posting:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Debian+Squeak&hl=en&rnum=1&sel... qMT m-0000ML-0W%40anchor-post-32.mail.demon.net
And you also wrote somewhere else that:
A similar clause in the Squeak license was enough to prevent me from packaging it as Apple confirmed to me that it did indeed mean that if a Debian user sued them then Debian could theoretically be liable to pay any legal fees and damages. You need to have this clarified.
That does sound as "the killer" - also read more below. Andrew?
Absolutely. Debian, whilst fairly large, and with a big userbase, is not what anyone could call rich :) (we exist on donations of hardware and network resources. All the work is done by volunteers. We have almost no money at all)
John Hinsley jhinsley@telinco.co.uk wrote:
Duane Maxwell wrote:
On Thursday, October 25, 2001 6:21 PM, Andrew C. Greenberg wrote
On Thursday, October 25, 2001, at 08:19 PM, Lex Spoon wrote:
The main problem Debian has with Squeak-L is the indemnification clause, not the "non-free" parts. Would you not be worried yourself about agreeing to such a clause?
No. I would expect anybody who let me play with their code for free, so that I was free to do anything I wanted to do with it -- including using it to cause damage or infringe, would expect me to hold them harmless when THEY got sued for MY conduct.
I agree completely. You often hear the OSS community whining about how some software house should release their abandoned code base as OSS (cf. BeOS, Amiga, OpenMail, etc.) . In today's litigious environment, no sane company would do so unless they were able to at least raise some indemnification barrier to protect them, so I would expect clauses like this one, and ones that are more or less required by XYZ country's export restrictions to be pretty much standard in anything that somehow manages to get released.
No. The don't need an indemnification barrier. All they need it the standard "no warranty express or implied, if it blows your house up, causes the end of the world or makes your wife pregnant then you have comeback" type clause. See the plethora of free licenses which have this (GPL, BSD, etc)
Now, perish the tort ;-) I don't want to get involved in arguments with lawyers, but the GPL states:
If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
(Which might cover the export restriction stuff)
Yep. The export restriction is not the barier though. The indemnification is.
This is interesting. I had missed that in the GPL.
But still Squeak-L doesn't talk about "patents or by copyrighted interfaces" - it simply says that countries in some way banned by the US is a no no.
and
BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM ``AS IS'' WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
Which seems to me to cover the indemnity stuff adequately.
Not at all. Those clauses say ~"you may not sue us because you got it for free and we do not provide ANY warranty for it if it, even if it manages to cause world war 3". The clause in the Apple license saye ~"You can sue us if you like, but then you have to pay our legal fees. And if a third party you have no control over sues us but they got the software from you then you are *still* liable to pay our costs and legal fees."
At least we could perhaps sortof "settle" on why Debian is not doable so that we at least know why we can't bang on Debian's door anymore.
As the current license stands we (Debian) can't distribute Squeak. The major problem is the indemnification clause. We *will NOT* agree to indemnify Apple against some third party who we distribute the software to taking Apple to court. We just can't afford to. Sorry.
The minor problems are the fonts (which can either be removed or left there. I can still distribute it either way) and the export restrictions (I can arrange to not actually ever export it at all. All distribution can be done from a non-US mirror and therefore would be *imported* into the US in which case the restrictions do not apply. I am outside the US personally.)
Cheers,
Stephen Stafford wrote:
Duane Maxwell wrote:
I agree completely. You often hear the OSS community whining about how some software house should release their abandoned code base as OSS (cf. BeOS, Amiga, OpenMail, etc.) . In today's litigious environment, no sane company would do so unless they were able to at least raise some indemnification barrier to protect them, so I would expect clauses like this one, and ones that are more or less required by XYZ country's export restrictions to be pretty much standard in anything that somehow manages to get released.
No. The don't need an indemnification barrier. All they need it the standard "no warranty express or implied, if it blows your house up, causes the end of the world or makes your wife pregnant then you have comeback" type clause. See the plethora of free licenses which have this (GPL, BSD, etc)
The difference is that the GPL and BSD licenses typically cover software developed in toto under that license. In this case, however, this is closed source software begin converted to open source - which means that the heritage can be traced back to a large and fairly well-heeled corporation that can be targeted by litigation as a deep-pocket defendant.
One of the arguments raised against OSS is that that there's no one to hold responsible in the case of a problem - in fact MS touts the support of a solid corporation as one of the benefits of using their software, no matter how absurd that claim actually is in reality.
I'm curious if you have any nontrivial examples of previously closed software whose ownership was originally held by a substantial corporation that was released open source under an unmodified GPL or BSD license.
Cheers -
-- Duane
On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 03:12:16PM -0800, Duane Maxwell wrote: [...]
I'm curious if you have any nontrivial examples of previously closed software whose ownership was originally held by a substantial corporation that was released open source under an unmodified GPL or BSD license.
StarOffice/OpenOffice neatly falls into that category, as does Mozilla. GEM was released under the GPL when Caldera bought Digital Research. The Watcom C compiler is due to be released as open-source software as well, although the current maintainers are still trying to remove third-party-licensed code.
--Chris
Chris Reuter wrote:
GEM was released under the GPL when Caldera bought Digital Research. The Watcom C compiler is due to be released as open-source software as well, although the current maintainers are still trying to remove third-party-licensed code.
Now that's a blast from the past. The Atari ST (running GEM) was the computer on which I learned GUIs and event driven C programming (with the Mark Williams C compiler) when I was a kid. I recently got an Atari ST emulator running on my laptop and noticed something curious...there was a menu option on the desktop called "Blitter" which IIRC sped up the graphics display. I wonder if anyone here knows if this has any relationship to BitBlt?
- Stephen
I recently got an Atari ST emulator running on my laptop and noticed something curious...there was a menu option on the desktop called "Blitter" which IIRC sped up the graphics display. I wonder if anyone here knows if this has any relationship to BitBlt?
This feature is much newer than the programming related hardware/etc documentation I have (from 1986/87) on that machine but in the owners manual for MegaSTe (from 1990)
[ Ahh... for the days when an owner's manual had things like IO port pinouts.....]
it says:
"BLiTTER
The BLiTTER co-processor chip in the MEGA STe computer greatly improves the speed of text and graphic displays." [etc.]
There are Atari web sites you can search if you really want to know this stuff... and in fact, you can find information to answer your question here:
http://www.atari-st.lovely.net/atari-st-docs/hardware/BLITTER.TXT
which says, in part,
"The Atari ST Bit-Block Transfer Processor (BLiTTER) is a hardware imple- mentation of the bit-block transfer (BitBlt) algorithm. "
etc. including a reference to Smalltalk.
Hope this helps :-).
-Andy-
Thanks for the pointer! Now I'm curious how deep the connections (if any) between DRI, GEM, Atari, and PARC may have been...
- Stephen
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-admin@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-admin@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Andy Stoffel Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2001 11:08 AM To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: RE: [OT] GEM, Blitter, and Atari ST (was: RE: Debian and SqueakL revisited again)
I recently got an Atari ST emulator running on my laptop
and noticed
something curious...there was a menu option on the desktop called "Blitter" which IIRC sped up the graphics display. I wonder
if anyone
here knows if this has any relationship to BitBlt?
This feature is much newer than the programming related hardware/etc documentation I have (from 1986/87) on that machine but in the owners manual for MegaSTe (from 1990)
[ Ahh... for the days when an owner's manual had things like IO port pinouts.....]
it says:
"BLiTTER
The BLiTTER co-processor chip in the MEGA STe computer greatly improves the speed of text and graphic displays." [etc.]
There are Atari web sites you can search if you really want to know this stuff... and in fact, you can find information to answer your question here:
http://www.atari-st.lovely.net/atari-st-docs/hardware/BLITTER.TXT
which says, in part,
"The Atari ST Bit-Block Transfer Processor (BLiTTER) is a hardware imple- mentation of the bit-block transfer (BitBlt) algorithm. "
etc. including a reference to Smalltalk.
Hope this helps :-).
-Andy-
On Thursday 01 November 2001 08:29 am, Stephen Pair wrote:
Thanks for the pointer! Now I'm curious how deep the connections (if any) between DRI, GEM, Atari, and PARC may have been...
Apparently very deep. From http://xeroxstar.tripod.com/ :
When Xerox PARC was developing the first GUI, as seen on the 8010, Lee Jay Lorenzen was a key member of the team. He was later hired by Digital Research Inc., where he worked on a GUI he wanted to call Crystal (after an IBM project at the time, called Glass). Since Crystal was already trademarked, the project was renamed Gem. The acronym GEM (Graphical Environment Manager) came later. Lee wrote the vast majority of GEM/1 following his designs from the Xerox closely. In fact, his expertise writing first the Xerox system and later GEM allowed him to walk away from DRI and create a smaller cut-down version for his company, Ventura. An exchange happened between DRI and Gary Kildall at the Atari Grass Valley research center. Gary was given a VAX 11/750 in exchange for the development of CP/M 68K and GEM, which became TOS for the Atari ST line. GEM was also developed for early DOS computers. In fact, Elixir Desktop was built on top of the final version of GEM, version 3.
Actually, the first Xerox GUIs were developed on the Alto starting with prototypes in '72, and directly on the Alto when it started working in April '73. The Star was many years in the future at that point. The actual Star prototype GUI was called SmallStar and was done by David Canfield Smith (one of our three Dave Smiths) in Smalltalk. Politics prevented the Star from actually being programmed in Smalltalk (and the path they actually took was a long and dark one). Cf my previous comments about the AMIGA. Perhaps the best thing about the Star was one of the first and best attempts to create a "principled interface design". Various smart folks participated in this, including William Newman and Larry Tesler. I wasn't crazy about some of the design choices, but their "principles" gave rise to better than average discussions and arguments about UI.
Cheers,
Alan
------
At 8:52 AM -0800 11/1/01, Ned Konz wrote:
On Thursday 01 November 2001 08:29 am, Stephen Pair wrote:
Thanks for the pointer! Now I'm curious how deep the connections (if any) between DRI, GEM, Atari, and PARC may have been...
Apparently very deep. From http://xeroxstar.tripod.com/ :
When Xerox PARC was developing the first GUI, as seen on the 8010, Lee Jay Lorenzen was a key member of the team. He was later hired by Digital Research Inc., where he worked on a GUI he wanted to call Crystal (after an IBM project at the time, called Glass). Since Crystal was already trademarked, the project was renamed Gem. The acronym GEM (Graphical Environment Manager) came later. Lee wrote the vast majority of GEM/1 following his designs from the Xerox closely. In fact, his expertise writing first the Xerox system and later GEM allowed him to walk away from DRI and create a smaller cut-down version for his company, Ventura. An exchange happened between DRI and Gary Kildall at the Atari Grass Valley research center. Gary was given a VAX 11/750 in exchange for the development of CP/M 68K and GEM, which became TOS for the Atari ST line. GEM was also developed for early DOS computers. In fact, Elixir Desktop was built on top of the final version of GEM, version 3.
-- Ned Konz currently: Stanwood, WA email: ned@bike-nomad.com homepage: http://bike-nomad.com
Can you give a pointer to the "principles"? Sounds like something I could use.
David
At 01:05 PM 11/1/2001 -0800, you wrote:
Actually, the first Xerox GUIs were developed on the Alto starting with prototypes in '72, and directly on the Alto when it started working in April '73. The Star was many years in the future at that point. The actual Star prototype GUI was called SmallStar and was done by David Canfield Smith (one of our three Dave Smiths) in Smalltalk. Politics prevented the Star from actually being programmed in Smalltalk (and the path they actually took was a long and dark one). Cf my previous comments about the AMIGA. Perhaps the best thing about the Star was one of the first and best attempts to create a "principled interface design". Various smart folks participated in this, including William Newman and Larry Tesler. I wasn't crazy about some of the design choices, but their "principles" gave rise to better than average discussions and arguments about UI.
Cheers,
Alan
At 8:52 AM -0800 11/1/01, Ned Konz wrote:
On Thursday 01 November 2001 08:29 am, Stephen Pair wrote:
Thanks for the pointer! Now I'm curious how deep the connections (if any) between DRI, GEM, Atari, and PARC may have been...
Apparently very deep. From http://xeroxstar.tripod.com/ :
When Xerox PARC was developing the first GUI, as seen on the 8010, Lee Jay Lorenzen was a key member of the team. He was later hired by Digital Research Inc., where he worked on a GUI he wanted to call Crystal (after an IBM project at the time, called Glass). Since Crystal was already trademarked, the project was renamed Gem. The acronym GEM (Graphical Environment Manager) came later. Lee wrote the vast majority of GEM/1 following his designs from the Xerox closely. In fact, his expertise writing first the Xerox system and later GEM allowed him to walk away from DRI and create a smaller cut-down version for his company, Ventura. An exchange happened between DRI and Gary Kildall at the Atari Grass Valley research center. Gary was given a VAX 11/750 in exchange for the development of CP/M 68K and GEM, which became TOS for the Atari ST line. GEM was also developed for early DOS computers. In fact, Elixir Desktop was built on top of the final version of GEM, version 3.
-- Ned Konz currently: Stanwood, WA email: ned@bike-nomad.com homepage: http://bike-nomad.com
--
I will try to dig them out. However, the later ones by Apple -- the Interface Guidelines midwifed by Chris Espinosa -- were a later, more comprehensive digest. To me, the importance of both of these lies more in their approach to stating and rationalizing design principles, rather than the particular decisions that were made.
Cheers,
Alan
------
At 3:53 PM -0500 11/1/01, David A. Smith wrote:
Can you give a pointer to the "principles"? Sounds like something I could use.
David
At 01:05 PM 11/1/2001 -0800, you wrote:
Actually, the first Xerox GUIs were developed on the Alto starting with prototypes in '72, and directly on the Alto when it started working in April '73. The Star was many years in the future at that point. The actual Star prototype GUI was called SmallStar and was done by David Canfield Smith (one of our three Dave Smiths) in Smalltalk. Politics prevented the Star from actually being programmed in Smalltalk (and the path they actually took was a long and dark one). Cf my previous comments about the AMIGA. Perhaps the best thing about the Star was one of the first and best attempts to create a "principled interface design". Various smart folks participated in this, including William Newman and Larry Tesler. I wasn't crazy about some of the design choices, but their "principles" gave rise to better than average discussions and arguments about UI.
Cheers,
Alan
At 8:52 AM -0800 11/1/01, Ned Konz wrote:
On Thursday 01 November 2001 08:29 am, Stephen Pair wrote:
Thanks for the pointer! Now I'm curious how deep the connections (if any) between DRI, GEM, Atari, and PARC may have been...
Apparently very deep. From http://xeroxstar.tripod.com/ :
When Xerox PARC was developing the first GUI, as seen on the 8010, Lee Jay Lorenzen was a key member of the team. He was later hired by Digital Research Inc., where he worked on a GUI he wanted to call Crystal (after an IBM project at the time, called Glass). Since Crystal was already trademarked, the project was renamed Gem. The acronym GEM (Graphical Environment Manager) came later. Lee wrote the vast majority of GEM/1 following his designs from the Xerox closely. In fact, his expertise writing first the Xerox system and later GEM allowed him to walk away from DRI and create a smaller cut-down version for his company, Ventura. An exchange happened between DRI and Gary Kildall at the Atari Grass Valley research center. Gary was given a VAX 11/750 in exchange for the development of CP/M 68K and GEM, which became TOS for the Atari ST line. GEM was also developed for early DOS computers. In fact, Elixir Desktop was built on top of the final version of GEM, version 3.
-- Ned Konz currently: Stanwood, WA email: ned@bike-nomad.com homepage: http://bike-nomad.com
--
Hi old lovers of Atari. I made games called Skweek and SuperSkweek on the atari, Amiga and Lynx (yes the first colored game boy: we got never payed for this one) because our nice editor got bankrupted ad the french state took all the money they needed for taxes before us ;(((
I was doing the drawing and gameplay of the character and my friend the rest. It was real fun. Skweek got a good female audience which was really fun. Our editor accepted our game because their secretaries went playing during launch time to the alpha version. Skweek on Atari was never cracked and that was a mistake from us because now we cannot find it except on amiga ;) The paper critics were quite good and two year ago one guys asked me to have another disk because his was damaged ;)
http://amiga.emucamp.com/superskweek.htm
Try google.
Stef
David A. Smith wrote:
Can you give a pointer to the "principles"? Sounds like something I could use.
David
"Designing the Star User Interface", Byte April 1982, 242-282.
A true classic.
One gets an idea of how revolutionary it was by reading the ads on the same pages.
Henrik
Stephen Pair wrote:
Thanks for the pointer! Now I'm curious how deep the connections (if any) between DRI, GEM, Atari, and PARC may have been...
Consult your local Google:
http://xeroxstar.tripod.com/figure1.gif
And I also learned GUI programing on an Atari, C and 68k "assembler" :-)
Michael
I will admit to being the "Chief Scientist" of Atari during a turbulent few years from '81 through early '84. The machine now known as the AMIGA was orginally funded by Atari during this time through R&D (however, I had very little to do with the design which was done by an spinoff group). It was an attempt to do some of the things you could do with an Alto + some of the things people had learned to do with games HW. There were some funny stories connected with this machine during the Atari collapse in 1984. The designers managed to get the rights to the machine (they were a semiautonomous entity somewhat separate from Atari). Jack Tremiel (not a nice guy) bought Atari on the assumption that he was getting the AMIGA. As the legend goes, you could hear his scream of rage in Antarctica when he found out that the AMIGA was gone.
Cheers,
Alan
At 9:14 AM -0500 11/1/01, Stephen Pair wrote:
Chris Reuter wrote:
GEM was released under the GPL when Caldera bought Digital Research. The Watcom C compiler is due to be released as open-source software as well, although the current maintainers are still trying to remove third-party-licensed code.
Now that's a blast from the past. The Atari ST (running GEM) was the computer on which I learned GUIs and event driven C programming (with the Mark Williams C compiler) when I was a kid. I recently got an Atari ST emulator running on my laptop and noticed something curious...there was a menu option on the desktop called "Blitter" which IIRC sped up the graphics display. I wonder if anyone here knows if this has any relationship to BitBlt?
- Stephen
On Thu, Nov 01, 2001 at 12:55:05PM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
I will admit to being the "Chief Scientist" of Atari during a turbulent few years from '81 through early '84. The machine now known as the AMIGA was orginally funded by Atari during this time through R&D (however, I had very little to do with the design which was done by an spinoff group). It was an attempt to do some of the things you could do with an Alto + some of the things people had learned to do with games HW. There were some funny stories connected with this machine during the Atari collapse in 1984. The designers managed to get the rights to the machine (they were a semiautonomous entity somewhat separate from Atari). Jack Tremiel (not a nice guy) bought Atari on the assumption that he was getting the AMIGA. As the legend goes, you could hear his scream of rage in Antarctica when he found out that the AMIGA was gone.
...and not just gone, but gone into the hands of the company Jack just abandoned, Commodore!
Wow, this is a piece of Amiga history I was unaware of...thanks for sharing it! I was never quite clear about why Jack abandoned Commodore at the "peak" of its success so suddenly...
I still have ancient computer magazines that mention the "Lorraine", the former codename for the first Amiga. Of course these same magazines make mention of the Amiga "Joyboard", one of the original peripherals designed by the team that made the first Amiga. Rumour has it that the Joyboard was the inspiration for the infamous "Guru Meditation" error (the joyboard shipped with a game called "Zen Meditation").
Ah...memories... I always wanted a version of Smalltalk for my old Amiga. I'm not aware that a version was ever made available though.
Cheers,
Alan
At 9:14 AM -0500 11/1/01, Stephen Pair wrote:
Chris Reuter wrote:
GEM was released under the GPL when Caldera bought Digital Research. The Watcom C compiler is due to be released as open-source software as well, although the current maintainers are still trying to remove third-party-licensed code.
Now that's a blast from the past. The Atari ST (running GEM) was the computer on which I learned GUIs and event driven C programming (with the Mark Williams C compiler) when I was a kid. I recently got an Atari ST emulator running on my laptop and noticed something curious...there was a menu option on the desktop called "Blitter" which IIRC sped up the graphics display. I wonder if anyone here knows if this has any relationship to BitBlt?
- Stephen
--
I loved my 520ST...when I got it (Xmas of '85 I think), it had 512k of RAM when 64k was considered a lot on PCs. I thought Mac users must have all been color blind. This was just before the Amiga hit the market I think. But, it was all downhill after that. I never read a good thing about Jack Tramiel, and from the outside, it was apparent that he was running the company into the ground. They never managed to get another product out the door that was as far ahead of the competition as the 520, and they developed a bad habit of announcing things well in advance of when they could actually deliver. I sure had a lot of fun with that computer though.
- Stephen
Alan Kay wrote:
I will admit to being the "Chief Scientist" of Atari during a turbulent few years from '81 through early '84. The machine now known as the AMIGA was orginally funded by Atari during this time through R&D (however, I had very little to do with the design which was done by an spinoff group). It was an attempt to do some of the things you could do with an Alto + some of the things people had learned to do with games HW. There were some funny stories connected with this machine during the Atari collapse in 1984. The designers managed to get the rights to the machine (they were a semiautonomous entity somewhat separate from Atari). Jack Tremiel (not a nice guy) bought Atari on the assumption that he was getting the AMIGA. As the legend goes, you could hear his scream of rage in Antarctica when he found out that the AMIGA was gone.
Cheers,
Alan
At 9:14 AM -0500 11/1/01, Stephen Pair wrote:
Chris Reuter wrote:
GEM was released under the GPL when Caldera bought Digital Research. The Watcom C compiler is due to be released as open-source software as well, although the current maintainers are still trying to remove third-party-licensed code.
Now that's a blast from the past. The Atari ST (running
GEM) was the
computer on which I learned GUIs and event driven C
programming (with
the Mark Williams C compiler) when I was a kid. I recently got an Atari ST emulator running on my laptop and noticed something curious...there was a menu option on the desktop called
"Blitter" which
IIRC sped up the graphics display. I wonder if anyone here knows if this has any relationship to BitBlt?
- Stephen
--
I still have mine too - and I run it occasionaly to run C-Lab's Notator/Creator music software. In fact I'm about to set it up in the garage as part of my hobbie music studio. I have some tracks that alot of hours of work have gone into and I've left it so long I'm not sure whether I'll be able to migrate them. I'm quite happy with it but if anyone has any ideas as to the best course of action, let me know.
Cheers,
Stewart
PS Although I'm using VisualWorks daily and haven't looked at Squeak for ages I still find this list stimulating and informative - thanks to all.
On Fri, 02 Nov 2001, you wrote:
I loved my 520ST...when I got it (Xmas of '85 I think), it had 512k of RAM when 64k was considered a lot on PCs. I thought Mac users must have all been color blind. This was just before the Amiga hit the market I think. But, it was all downhill after that. I never read a good thing about Jack Tramiel, and from the outside, it was apparent that he was running the company into the ground. They never managed to get another product out the door that was as far ahead of the competition as the 520, and they developed a bad habit of announcing things well in advance of when they could actually deliver. I sure had a lot of fun with that computer though.
- Stephen
Alan Kay wrote:
I will admit to being the "Chief Scientist" of Atari during a turbulent few years from '81 through early '84. The machine now known as the AMIGA was orginally funded by Atari during this time through R&D (however, I had very little to do with the design which was done by an spinoff group). It was an attempt to do some of the things you could do with an Alto + some of the things people had learned to do with games HW. There were some funny stories connected with this machine during the Atari collapse in 1984. The designers managed to get the rights to the machine (they were a semiautonomous entity somewhat separate from Atari). Jack Tremiel (not a nice guy) bought Atari on the assumption that he was getting the AMIGA. As the legend goes, you could hear his scream of rage in Antarctica when he found out that the AMIGA was gone.
Cheers,
Alan
At 9:14 AM -0500 11/1/01, Stephen Pair wrote:
Chris Reuter wrote:
GEM was released under the GPL when Caldera bought Digital Research. The Watcom C compiler is due to be released as open-source software as well, although the current maintainers are still trying to remove third-party-licensed code.
Now that's a blast from the past. The Atari ST (running
GEM) was the
computer on which I learned GUIs and event driven C
programming (with
the Mark Williams C compiler) when I was a kid. I recently got an Atari ST emulator running on my laptop and noticed something curious...there was a menu option on the desktop called
"Blitter" which
IIRC sped up the graphics display. I wonder if anyone here knows if this has any relationship to BitBlt?
- Stephen
--
Hi Stewart.
There's a substantial community of Atari music users over on the atari-midi mailing list, www.groups.yahoo.com/group/atari-midi who will be only too happy to help you out with any queries. It's also worth checking out the homepage of the group's moderator, Tim Conrardy, at http://tamw.atari-users.net . He's put together a huge collection of "abandon-ware" (and is activly campaigning to get more stuff released).
I'm not a Notator user myself, but I understand that the Notator user group & mailling list (www.notator.org) is a fairly happening place.
HTH,
Nick
On Sun, 4 Nov 2001 13:03:32 +1300, Stewart MacLean wrote:
I still have mine too - and I run it occasionaly to run C-Lab's Notator/Creator music software. In fact I'm about to set it up in the garage as part of my hobbie music studio. I have some tracks that alot of hours of work have gone into and I've left it so long I'm not sure whether I'll be able to migrate them. I'm quite happy with it but if anyone has any ideas as to the best course of action, let me know.
Cheers,
Stewart
PS Although I'm using VisualWorks daily and haven't looked at Squeak for ages I still find this list stimulating and informative - thanks to all.
On Thu, Nov 01, 2001 at 09:14:41AM -0500, Stephen Pair wrote:
Chris Reuter wrote:
GEM was released under the GPL when Caldera bought Digital Research. The Watcom C compiler is due to be released as open-source software as well, although the current maintainers are still trying to remove third-party-licensed code.
Now that's a blast from the past. The Atari ST (running GEM) was the computer on which I learned GUIs and event driven C programming (with the Mark Williams C compiler) when I was a kid.
I still have mine. It's sitting in front of me right now, turned off and convered with a thin layer of dust Periodically, I think about porting Squeak to it. I suspect it wouldn't run very fast, though.
--Chris
I've got one too, sitting in front of me - 1040ST and a mono monitor for it. I played flight simulator on it. David
Chris Reuter wrote:
On Thu, Nov 01, 2001 at 09:14:41AM -0500, Stephen Pair wrote:
Chris Reuter wrote:
GEM was released under the GPL when Caldera bought Digital Research. The Watcom C compiler is due to be released as open-source software as well, although the current maintainers are still trying to remove third-party-licensed code.
Now that's a blast from the past. The Atari ST (running GEM) was the computer on which I learned GUIs and event driven C programming (with the Mark Williams C compiler) when I was a kid.
I still have mine. It's sitting in front of me right now, turned off and convered with a thin layer of dust Periodically, I think about porting Squeak to it. I suspect it wouldn't run very fast, though.
--Chris
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