APL - Rre: newbie needs help comparing APL versus J versus K!

Author

Rre: newbie needs help comparing APL versus J versus K!

Don Barry

2004-06-25, 7:20 pm

on 2004-03-28, Kym (not@here.com) wrote,
> The realy good news is that J is now free. J5.03 (the latest) has a free
> license.
> www.jsoftware.com
> Give it a go!

Would that this were so.

It is true that individual licenses for use of J5.03 (which is provided in
binary only for a small number of platforms) are available (at the moment) for free.

I'm convinced that one of the impediments to the more rapid growth of the J
language is the fear occasioned by the unavailability of its source, and
the unclear path that might follow after retirement of its
its principal developers. Some of them, after all, have had very long
careers behind them!

Stallman's four freedoms for software define what would, I believe, be
a great liberation for J - in terms of mindset, because people would be
convinced that J was here to stay.

1: the freedom to run the program for any purpose
2: the freedom to study and modify the program
3: the freedom to copy the program
4: the freedom to redistribute modified or unmodified versions of the program

Right now J is unfree by all of these criteria except for 1 (and then the
onerous condition of registration applies).

J was initially developed openly, with full C source distributed. Roger
Hui's unique and beautiful C style was there for all to see. I don't
recall if there was even a license provided with that code (still available
from U Waterloo, I believe), but it provided comfort.

Please consider GPLing J, or committing to eventually doing this for
archival J versions.

(I note that J4 unix versions linked against the GPLed readline library,
in violation of its license. J5 no longer does so.)

Still, regards to the J developers for the most beautiful and elegant
language I know.

Don Barry,
Astronomer, Spitzer Space Telescope Team,
Cornell University

Steve Rogers

2004-07-08, 3:56 pm

don@astro.cornell.edu (Don Barry) wrote in message news:<a316a559.0406250955.7063b31b@posting.google.com>...
> on 2004-03-28, Kym (not@here.com) wrote,
>
> Would that this were so.
>
> It is true that individual licenses for use of J5.03 (which is provided in
> binary only for a small number of platforms) are available (at the moment) for free.
>
> I'm convinced that one of the impediments to the more rapid growth of the J
> language is the fear occasioned by the unavailability of its source, and
> the unclear path that might follow after retirement of its
> its principal developers. Some of them, after all, have had very long
> careers behind them!
>
> ...
>
> Please consider GPLing J, or committing to eventually doing this for
> archival J versions.
>

I'd like to see this also. It would make J more attractive for
personal, small scale, and not for profit projects with an indefinite
life. However, the current free binary license would work for some
such projects. If the project is well funded, Jsoftware will sell a
source license. J is also mature enough for many projects to be able
to continue using it in the absence of furture support as long as they
remain on a currently supported platform.

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