I've noticed that many NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP software programs have been made into freeware as companies have either closed or shifted focus to other platforms/types of software. Some, however, haven't. Rather than either continuing to sell OR freely releasing their good, many companies have simply made their goods unavailable at any price. Let's change that. Let's find out who owns what (and isn't selling/giving it away) and bug them to either open source (or at least make into binary freeware) the products they no longer care about.
Obviously, the "crown jewel" of such an effort would be an open source release of OPENSTEP 4.2 (sadly unlikely for a number of reasons), but there's plenty of abandoned apps too (and maybe we could even get a MacOS 7-style freeware release of OS4.2 itself if we begged hard enough).
I'm starting with AFS's "back catalouge" of WriteUp and PasteUp. Feel free to suggest other "targets" or to help with the current one
Bah. Nobody's interested. My e-mail to AFS was never returned and nobody ever replied tro this (despite 56 views)? Are people really THAT uninterested in seeing more software become freely (and legally) available for NS/OS?
well, I can't think of any apps off the top of my head I would like to see... :\
Sounds like a good idea for abandoned apps. The thing to do would be to assemble a list of applications that haven't been released and then let the e-mails fly. In some cases it might take some investigation to determine who currently owns the rights to the software.
A list sounds like a good idea. I'll go through the "master list" of NS/OS apps at
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/meApps.html, translate it into English, and add status info about each item. Apps already available as FOSS will be marked as such. Freeware apps will be marked as such (and the license codes noted if needed). Commerical apps (still sold) will be marked as such and Abandonded apps will be marked as such, along with guess as to their cureent owner.