NeXT Application Database

As part of my plan to try and get as much "abandoned" NeXT software release for free (at least "free as in beer" but hopefully "free as in speech" too), I've started an online NeXTSTEP Applications database.

All the basics are in place, now I just need to add some data...

The first task is to migrate the info from http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/meApps.html into my newer, more interactive (and more English) system. I'm starting with apps already available for free (as documented by the keys available at http://nextcube.org/board/bbs.php3?board=board&line=rdate&fld=&mode=view&id=2739&nws=&page=2&keyword=&flag=&a_o= ) and will then add the abandoned and still-sold stuff.

Folks are welcome to help out with data contributions and suggestions.

The Stone Design software is all still for sale for anyone who wants to use it (I bought all the license strings I use for Andrew's software). All other Stone Design materials on my sites are used with the express permission of Andrew Stone.

The Caffeine Software license code for TIFFany II that I have on my site I got permission to dsiplay from Caffeine Software. Sadly, due to restrictions from Apple, I couldn't provide a license code for TIFFany3.

The Calle Mayo Software materials for Chronographer that are on my site are also provided via permission of the owner.

In all these cases I found the people quite willing and helpful.

On the other hand, some people aren't as helpful... such as AFS. I was curious to have access to unencumbered versions of WriteUp and (more importantly) PasteUp, but they were unwilling to sell either product at any price.

Similarly, I was unable to track down anyone associated with either GraphiX or Marlow (both are for Rhapsody) to find out how to get license strings or make available either app.

Basically, there is a lot of hit-n-miss involved in this type of thing, but I strongly urge that you make attempts to get permission before providing license strings for apps. I know that for many people NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody are just adventures in nostalgia, but because many of these are all still quite useful applications I would suggest buying them if you really plan on using them. Otherwise, there really isn't much need to enable many of them beyond their default demo modes for those who are little more than platform tourists.

Quote from: "RacerX"The Stone Design software is all still for sale for anyone who wants to use it (I bought all the license strings I use for Andrew's software). All other Stone Design materials on my sites are used with the express permission of Andrew Stone.

The Caffeine Software license code for TIFFany II that I have on my site I got permission to dsiplay from Caffeine Software. Sadly, due to restrictions from Apple, I couldn't provide a license code for TIFFany3.

The Calle Mayo Software materials for Chronographer that are on my site are also provided via permission of the owner.

In all these cases I found the people quite willing and helpful.

On the other hand, some people aren't as helpful... such as AFS. I was curious to have access to unencumbered versions of WriteUp and (more importantly) PasteUp, but they were unwilling to sell either product at any price.

Similarly, I was unable to track down anyone associated with either GraphiX or Marlow (both are for Rhapsody) to find out how to get license strings or make available either app.

Basically, there is a lot of hit-n-miss involved in this type of thing, but I strongly urge that you make attempts to get permission before providing license strings for apps. I know that for many people NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody are just adventures in nostalgia, but because many of these are all still quite useful applications I would suggest buying them if you really plan on using them. Otherwise, there really isn't much need to enable many of them beyond their default demo modes for those who are little more than platform tourists.

Well, the whole point of my project is to GET permission to distribute stuff like the keys for abandoned stuff and to let people know where to buy stuff that's still for sale (like the Stone Design Stuff)

Of course, for things that have already been made free, I want to provide download links and license keys in a central place.

BTW, I realized that I never provided a link to my own online database, so here it is: http://creator.zoho.com/madcrow/next-software-database/

QuoteOn the other hand, some people aren't as helpful... such as AFS. I was curious to have access to unencumbered versions of WriteUp and (more importantly) PasteUp, but they were unwilling to sell either product at any price.

So they just don't want to sell. Maybe they cannot provide any support for new licenses and so they prefer to don't sell. Do you think it is possible to change their minds by a petition?

I was wondering if anyone had approached Apple about the 'big one'... IE would they be willing to entertain some kind of a way to allow Nextstep/Openstep to be released in some fashion?  I know the postscript rights was one of the big reasons why it cost so much...

I even wonder if the source code to any of it has survived... Does anyone know?

Quote from: "madcrow"Well, the whole point of my project is to GET permission to distribute stuff like the keys for abandoned stuff and to let people know where to buy stuff that's still for sale (like the Stone Design Stuff)

Of course, for things that have already been made free, I want to provide download links and license keys in a central place.

Well, then you may want to reconsider your original plan where you said...

QuoteI'm starting with apps already available for free (as documented by the keys available at http://nextcube.org/board/bbs.php3?board=board&line=rdate&fld=&mode=view&id=2739&nws=&page=2&keyword=&flag=&a_o= ) and will then add the abandoned and still-sold stuff.

Not all of those license strings are approved by their respective owners.

You were asking for suggestions, and I am suggesting that just because you can find a license string out there, that doesn't mean it is one that the owner has given permission to use it. You aren't the first to attempt something like this (which is most likely why you have gotten a luke-warm response so far) and I doubt you'll be the last.

Another suggestion... don't make the mistake that many people on the web make. When building a site of this type, consider your audience. A lot of projects like yours are done using modern tools on modern systems and often end up with pages that are completely useless for people who are using NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. What would be the point of building a site for NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP apps that can't be easily visited by someone using either NEXTSTEP or OPENSTEP?

I built both my Rhapsody and NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP sites in Rhapsody using Rhapsody native apps to insure that the pages display correctly in OmniWeb 3.0. If you are going to try to provide a central place for this stuff, it would seem to me that you would want that central place to be accessible to your target audience (NeXT users using the NeXT platform).

I've seen people try what you are attempting in the past, but without worrying about the accessibility of their target audience... their success (or the lack there of) is born out by the fact that you seem to think this needs to be done again. If anything, it doesn't need to be done again, it needs to be done right. And the easy test is to make sure that the pages you put up display correctly on your NeXT system.

Anyways, I'm just answering your request for comments and suggestions.

Quote from: "RacerX"Another suggestion... don't make the mistake that many people on the web make. When building a site of this type, consider your audience. A lot of projects like yours are done using modern tools on modern systems and often end up with pages that are completely useless for people who are using NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. What would be the point of building a site for NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP apps that can't be easily visited by someone using either NEXTSTEP or OPENSTEP?

I built both my Rhapsody and NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP sites in Rhapsody using Rhapsody native apps to insure that the pages display correctly in OmniWeb 3.0. If you are going to try to provide a central place for this stuff, it would seem to me that you would want that central place to be accessible to your target audience (NeXT users using the NeXT platform).

I've seen people try what you are attempting in the past, but without worrying about the accessibility of their target audience... their success (or the lack there of) is born out by the fact that you seem to think this needs to be done again. If anything, it doesn't need to be done again, it needs to be done right. And the easy test is to make sure that the pages you put up display correctly on your NeXT system.

Anyways, I'm just answering your request for comments and suggestions.

I'll be sure to try it (and if needed, restart and go with a less elaborate setup)

As for the issue of non-approved licenses, I'm NOT going to add the time-limited ones (using them seems like it would just be wrong). I know for a fact that MOST of the keys their ARE officially allowed, but I'll check with you (or someone else) before I post anything that seems suspect.

BTW, DOES the DB work in OPENSTEP? I can't really tell as I can't get the darn networking to work with my VMware setup)

Quote from: "it68000"

QuoteOn the other hand, some people aren't as helpful... such as AFS. I was curious to have access to unencumbered versions of WriteUp and (more importantly) PasteUp, but they were unwilling to sell either product at any price.

So they just don't want to sell. Maybe they cannot provide any support for new licenses and so they prefer to don't sell. Do you think it is possible to change their minds by a petition?

If enough people ask, they just might say "Here's a key to unlock the downloads, now go away and don't ask us for help."

Quote from: "it68000"So they just don't want to sell. Maybe they cannot provide any support for new licenses and so they prefer to don't sell. Do you think it is possible to change their minds by a petition?

In my interactions with the owner he seemed pretty set on not opening it up to anyone under any terms.

Quote from: "neozeed"I was wondering if anyone had approached Apple about the 'big one'... IE would they be willing to entertain some kind of a way to allow Nextstep/Openstep to be released in some fashion? I know the postscript rights was one of the big reasons why it cost so much...

Actually it has more to do with the BSD license than the postscript stuff. NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody all use encumbered versions of BSD, Darwin/Mac OS X were the first to use 4.4BSD Lite code.

The same restrictions that have kept Apple from giving away A/UX (which uses System V Release 2.2) are why NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody can't be given away (without a major rewrite to remove the licensed BSD code from them). Otherwise, Apple would owe several hundred dollars for every download of A/UX, NEXTSTEP, OPENSTEP and Rhapsody that they provided.

At least with the Black Hole agreement they break even for each copy sold.

Quote from: "madcrow"As for the issue of non-approved licenses, I'm NOT going to add the time-limited ones (using them seems like it would just be wrong). I know for a fact that MOST of the keys their ARE officially allowed, but I'll check with you (or someone else) before I post anything that seems suspect.

The string for TIFFany on that page isn't officially allowed, and the last time I checked, Frank Siegert didn't want his license strings displayed on any other site other than his own. Same goes for Bacchus and IPC software.

:roll:

So minus the Stone Design, Caffeine Software, Siegert, Bacchus and IPC stuff, that page is just fine to use. :eek:

Part of the reason I made the comment I did was because about 11 of the 29 license strings displayed on that page are not officially allowed. So if by MOST you actually mean more than half, then your statement is correct.

Quote from: "madcrow"BTW, DOES the DB work in OPENSTEP? I can't really tell as I can't get the darn networking to work with my VMware setup

I haven't tried it in OPENSTEP, but this is what I get in Rhapsody under OmniWeb 3.1...



The images (your preview GIFs) that you up loaded don't display in OmniWeb. Is the above image the user experience you were wanting your target audience to have? :shock:

Yipes. It's pretty dire in Omniweb... I guess I'll just have to export my data or something... I'll have to test the PDFs that the backend creates in OmniPDF...

Also, the BSD 4.3 as included in Mach as used in NS/OS has been a non-issue since January 23, 2002. Caldera released the all pre-System III (AT&T's first commercial Unix release) Unix code under a BSD-like license. Since BSD was developed from 7th Edition and it's 32-bit port, 32V, which is covered by the "Ancient Unix" license, ALL versions of BSD have been unencumbered since early 2002. So far, all that's come out of the arrangement has been a few attemmpts to hack some more modern features into 2.11BSD (the last PDP-11 version), a code cleanup/modernization effort of 4.3BSD (the last version that ran on the VAX and also the version that lurks inside *STEP) and a strange port of 5th Edition UNIX to the Game Boy Advance, but that doesn't mean that something actually useful (like a free version of OPENSTEP) couldn't happen too.

If Adobe could be talked into allowing DPS to be released freely, then that would just leave Apple, who I suspect would never release OPENSTEP for free because it could easily grow into an OS X killer.

OmniPDF really doesn't like formats newer than PDF 1.3 (Acrobat 4) and works best with PDF 1.2 or earlier. The PDF your site creates is 1.4 (Acrobat 5), which should work okay in PDFView (and does in PDFView 2.21 but will most likely crash OmniPDF.

But unfortunately, like your uploaded images, NeXT users won't have the ability to get the PDF from the site. The export data feature is designed for modern browsers and won't function in NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody.

Very nice sites that make for an attractive user experience can be made for NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP users, but if you use modern shortcuts your basically cutting out your target audience. Your attempting to use a beta version of a database creation site... are you really expecting that something which is a beta in 2007 is going to function correctly with software made between 1997 and 2000?

Making sites that work with NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP requires... well, stepping back in time to when they were current. And even then, you'll need to remember what limitations they had back then (neither NEXTSTEP nor OPENSTEP had Java).



You know I'm sure that running this stuff in VMware is convenient, but maybe you should have a real (as in hardware) system up and running. My ThinkPad isn't all that expensive today and my SPARCstation 10 (which I've been using for about a year now) was free. With real hardware you could get on the net and see what you're actually making. Even better, you could use your system to create your site (I can build a page a a couple minutes in either OPENSTEP or Rhapsody using Create) to be sure it works where it was intended to.

Quote from: "madcrow"Also, the BSD 4.3 as included in Mach as used in NS/OS has been a non-issue since January 23, 2002. Caldera released the all pre-System III (AT&T's first commercial Unix release) Unix code under a BSD-like license. Since BSD was developed from 7th Edition and it's 32-bit port, 32V, which is covered by the "Ancient Unix" license, ALL versions of BSD have been unencumbered since early 2002. So far, all that's come out of the arrangement has been a few attemmpts to hack some more modern features into 2.11BSD (the last PDP-11 version), a code cleanup/modernization effort of 4.3BSD (the last version that ran on the VAX and also the version that lurks inside *STEP) and a strange port of 5th Edition UNIX to the Game Boy Advance, but that doesn't mean that something actually useful (like a free version of OPENSTEP) couldn't happen too.

Actually, the Caldera/SCO stuff has nothing to do with license arrangements between NeXT/Apple and the Regents of the University of California. Those licenses have no expiration date and make NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody undistributable without Apple paying the agreed fee per copy.

The term BSD-like license refers to any and all BSD derivatives based on 4.4BSD Lite, which had all encumbering aspect removed. NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP use 4.3BSD and Rhapsody uses 4.4BSD (Encumbered).

For the aid of everyone here, this is the text of Caldera license that I have:

QuoteCaldera
240 West Center Street
Orem, Utah 84057
801-765-4999 Fax 801-765-4481
January 23, 2002

Dear UNIX enthusiasts,

Caldera International, Inc. hereby grants a fee free license that includes the rights use, modify and distribute this named source code, including creating derived binary products created from the source code. The source code for which Caldera International, Inc. grants rights are limited to the following UNIX Operating Systems that operate on the 16-Bit PDP-11 CPU and early versions of the 32-Bit UNIX Operating System, with specific exclusion of UNIX System III and UNIX System V and successor operating systems:

32-bit 32V UNIX
16 bit UNIX Versions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Caldera International, Inc. makes no guarantees or commitments that any source code is available from Caldera International, Inc.

The following copyright notice applies to the source code files for which this license is granted.

Copyright(C) Caldera International Inc. 2001-2002. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code and documentation must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement:

This product includes software developed or owned by Caldera International, Inc.

Neither the name of Caldera International, Inc. nor the names of other contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.


USE OF THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED FOR UNDER THIS LICENSE BY CALDERA INTERNATIONAL, INC. AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL CALDERA INTERNATIONAL, INC. BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Very truly yours,
/signed/
Bill Broderick
Director, Licensing Services
* UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the US and other countries.

None of this has any baring on license agreements between parties not listed above. Assuming that this nullifies anything between NeXT/Apple and the Regents of the University of California is about as mistaken as assuming that MOST of the license strings on that linked page are officially allowed.

As a long time follower/contributer to Groklaw, I've been studying this stuff for many years now. Nothing has changed to BSD licenses based on pre 4.4BSD Lite versions. NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody are not ever going to be opened for free downloads by Apple.

Does this mean that all the BSD versions freely available on the unix archives are in trouble???

Although I'd almost consider asking Apple to see what their take is... I figure something old like NeXTSTEP shouldn't be a threat to anything they currently do, so would they care?  I mean if you think that page looks rough in OmniWeb 3, try it in 2!!

Quote from: "neozeed"Does this mean that all the BSD versions freely available on the unix archives are in trouble???

Depends... how are they being distributed (binary or source), and who is distributing them (Regents of the University of California distributing actual BSD versions or third parties distributing licensed derivatives). The biggest mistake people make is trying to apply legal agreements between unique parties as blanket agreements for everyone.

Quote from: "neozeed"Although I'd almost consider asking Apple to see what their take is... I figure something old like NeXTSTEP shouldn't be a threat to anything they currently do, so would they care? I mean if you think that page looks rough in OmniWeb 3, try it in 2!!

People have been asking Apple for years, it has nothing to do with it being a threat to Apple, it has to do with living up to your business agreements.

And if anyone thinks that the Caldera/SCO/Novell Unix code base is going to make any difference to A/UX if SVRX is made open source, the answer is no. A/UX was licensed to use SVR2.2 and that license agreement would have to be revisited by the interested parties to have it changed even if SVRX was made open source.

If there was one thing I learned from my father (lawyer/law professor) it is that contract law is never simple and never gets easier.

I highly doubt that Apple is going to pay a team of lawyers to revisit the license agreements for BSD or System V code in those old operating systems. The best we could hope for is that at some point (much like A/UX has become today) Apple stops caring about enforcing their rights to protect that software... but that isn't how it is currently.



As for how that page looks in OmniWeb, that is why I test in OmniWeb. What is the point of putting up a NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody site that those platforms can't even visit? :eek:

well... Its in binary and source... I'm probably guilty of it too..

I've slapped up this:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/

I wanted to screw around with the ethernet/networking....

In here I re-distribute the binaries, and in there is also the sourcecode...

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=204974&package_id=245145

And the material that I have, I just pulled from here:
http://www.tuhs.org/archive_sites.html

... But I do see what you mean, that just because they have released 32v, but prior aggrements are just that... I wonder of the Berkley people ever get sooooo tired of this thing...?  

You know maybe they would be interested in 'licensing' it...

lol maybe we could put together enough material for a book or something, and ask about redistributing a copy.....

I'm sure that'd go over well.

I've already got my own CD sets, but do the really troll around looking for NS/OS?

Berkeley actually released the BSD code to the public after the new Unix licesnse became available. I guess in order to see a free release of NS/OS we'd have to:

a. Get Berkeley to agree to allow free distribution
b. Get Adobe to agree to the same
c. Go to Apple with those agreements and say "we've done all the background work already, so have permission to release this for free if you want"
d. Scream, shout and make a fuss if Apple refuses.

Quote from: "madcrow"Berkeley actually released the BSD code to the public after the new Unix licesnse became available. I guess in order to see a free release of NS/OS we'd have to:

a. Get Berkeley to agree to allow free distribution
b. Get Adobe to agree to the same
c. Go to Apple with those agreements and say "we've done all the background work already, so have permission to release this for free if you want"
d. Scream, shout and make a fuss if Apple refuses.

Well 'a' seems doable, in that Berkeley isn't in the OS business, and I really don't think they care.

However 'b' is going to be a big deal  Especially if it were to involve a source license....  I don't see macromedia giving *anything* away to the public at large....  Although a flash player for NS would be cool! :)

As for Apple... I don't know... on the one hand I really don't think they would care.  However with some newer disk drivers, a USB stack (even if it only did keyboards/mice) and worked with more than 512 MB of ram it could become a contender again...  Of course I'm biased, I'd say OS or even NS could push linux off the desktop wars for good, and go after Windows server/desktops... But then I guess I'd be cannibalising the OS X market..

But then 'darwin' which does have a fair bit of NS/OS legacy in it is 'free and open' maybe they wouldn't care....

I suppose one could always ask....

Quote from: "neozeed"
....  Although a flash player for NS would be cool! :)

oooo... :) a FLV player would be nice. Probably doable too. Have to be a turbo NeXT *and* use the DSP and have to have a lot of ram to cache decompressed video for playing.

"sweet, i can watch youtube flicks now!" I can see it using 78mb of my 128mb of ram to cache the video... heh

It'd be really interesting to see just how well a NeXT could play various formats if hand optimized ASM was used for the player and it used both processors... I know Atari falcons have a DivX player that sorta works. But I think it might only work with a CT62 addon (the 060 upgrade)... Not sure on that.

Quote from: "neozeed"

Quote from: "madcrow"Berkeley actually released the BSD code to the public after the new Unix licesnse became available. I guess in order to see a free release of NS/OS we'd have to:

a. Get Berkeley to agree to allow free distribution
b. Get Adobe to agree to the same
c. Go to Apple with those agreements and say "we've done all the background work already, so have permission to release this for free if you want"
d. Scream, shout and make a fuss if Apple refuses.

Well 'a' seems doable, in that Berkeley isn't in the OS business, and I really don't think they care.

However 'b' is going to be a big deal  Especially if it were to involve a source license....  I don't see macromedia giving *anything* away to the public at large....  Although a flash player for NS would be cool! :)

As for Apple... I don't know... on the one hand I really don't think they would care.  However with some newer disk drivers, a USB stack (even if it only did keyboards/mice) and worked with more than 512 MB of ram it could become a contender again...  Of course I'm biased, I'd say OS or even NS could push linux off the desktop wars for good, and go after Windows server/desktops... But then I guess I'd be cannibalising the OS X market..

But then 'darwin' which does have a fair bit of NS/OS legacy in it is 'free and open' maybe they wouldn't care....

I suppose one could always ask....

I suspect Apple knows that Berkeley would give them permission to give away NS and OS. I suspect that Adobe could be convinced to allow Apple to give it away as well. The problem is, that I suspect that Apple KNOWS that an FOSS version of NS/OS would probably take some market share from Max OS X. That's why I suspect that even a freeware release of NS or OS is a long term stretch and that an open source release is just a dream.

Let's focus on getting a license key for PasteUp from AFS first ;)

QuoteI suspect Apple knows that Berkeley would give them permission to give away NS and OS.

Probably right.

QuoteI suspect that Adobe could be convinced to allow Apple to give it away as well.

Who knows? However Adobe doesn't seem to like freeware projects. Moreover Adobe has never release for free old apps.

QuoteThe problem is, that I suspect that Apple KNOWS that an FOSS version of NS/OS would probably take some market share from Max OS X. That's why I suspect that even a freeware release of NS or OS is a long term stretch and that an open source release is just a dream.

MacOSX is now too many years in advance. And killer apps (adobe, microsoft) would never become available for a freeware OS release.
RacerX explanation is more convincing at the moment  :wink: .
We have to consider that Apple had the good willing to give for free system 7.5 and Darwin as opensource.

QuoteLet's focus on getting a license key for PasteUp from AFS first

That would be a great start.
Did they answered to you at least?

Quote from: "it68000"

QuoteLet's focus on getting a license key for PasteUp from AFS first

That would be a great start.
Did they answered to you at least?

Nope, so I'm going to call on the phone...

OK,

Let me admit that I've tried to contact them.
I asked few time ago for an evaluation license string. They answered saying they don't have a way to generate licenses.

I hope you will receive a different answer.

You know it is funny, the OpenStep Specification has been out there for anyone to use since around 1994 (and is the foundation of GNUStep), both FreeBSD and Darwin have been around for years, and there is Display GhostScript (which Apple considered before starting down the path of developing Display PDF for Mac OS X)... the real problem has always been that NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP are far superior than what you get from the sum of their parts. But most of the parts have been free (as in speech) for years... you just can't run precompiled NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP apps on home made versions.

Apple is a business, and there is no good business reason to do anything with NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP any more... Specially not for free.

Adobe is also a business. And has been even more cold hearted at their business endeavors than Apple. Them releasing Apple from Display Postscript licenses would adversely effect Adobe's Postscript property (so isn't going to happen).

Further, how helpful has Adobe been to the NeXT community in the past? Display Postscript was primarily a NeXT development that Adobe then sold to other venders. Adobe was one of the first developers to abandon NeXT (by discontinuing Illustrator), and if no one else noticed, the NeXT platform was one of the only ones to never get ANY version of Acrobat Reader ported to it. And that is not even bringing up the FrameMaker stuff.

One would hope that at some point this type of stuff (the pointless mental exercise of we could change Apple's mind) would stop popping up every so often. The facts aren't ever going to change, you guys want something for nothing and no business is going to sink any amount of effort into something that doesn't profit them in someway.



Frankly, I would be happy to see more of these large scale projects turn into real large scale resources. Most of the best projects just happen rather than having a lot of discussion or planning. And it is usually the pie in the sky goals that sink these things.

Keep to realistic goals and you will have a much better chance of success.

AFS isn't willing to sell copies of their software anymore, so I think the odds are pretty good that they aren't going to give it away either. That would seem (to me) to make AFS software an unrealistic goal and a drag on this project of yours.

Wouldn't your efforts be better spent on things you could complete successfully? Most people trying stuff like this end up burning themselves out on unrealistic goals like this one. Why not get a successful site up and running first, with a handful of easier developers agreeing to help out, before going to AFS as someone from out of nowhere asking for software (that AFS themselves had purchased) for free.

Right now I wouldn't agree to give you the stuff you want for your project if I was AFS simply because you have nothing to show right now. If you had the best site on the net for NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP software, with tons of other developers having already agreed to provide you with license strings (rather than just collecting strings that are already out there), then you would have a better chance of getting AFS to even seriously consider what you are asking them.

Think about it.  :?