🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1124304003.646140.240800@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
 "jonhoyle@mac.com" <jonhoyle@mac.com> wrote:


Hi John,

When Metrowerks first discontinued Pascal they looked at the idea of 
open sourcing it but the compiler contained trade secrets and 
intellectual property that was shared with all of the compilers and 
could not be open sourced.

So we then tried to find a 3rd party that would continue to oversee 
Pascal plugins maintain it and provide updates and such.  However there 
was no competent and reliable business that would undertake this 
endeavor.

Sorry,

Ron

>With Metrowerks withdrawing from the Macintosh development arena, they
>have kindly considered Open-Sourcing the PowerPlant framework, making
>life a little easier for their (soon-to-be former) customers.
>
>While this discussion is open, I figure that this would be the only
>time that the following idea could happen, so I would like to make the
>following suggestion: Metrowerks, would you Open Source the Pascal
>compiler plug-in?  I am talking about only their front-end language
>compiler; the back-end PPC compiler they will want to keep internal
>(which is okay, since creating a back-end x86 compiler for it is what
>the Open Source community will want).
>
>Here are some thoughts on this I hope Metrowerks may find persuasive:
>
>1.  As with the Open-Sourcing of PowerPlant, Metrowerks offering this
>would be a very nice gesture and generate some positive public
>relations (which they could certainly use right about now).
>
>2.  Pascal has a very small marketshare, and a market which CodeWarrior
>does not compete in anymore, so there will be no negative impact on
>sales.
>
>3.  Where Pascal is still used today is primarily by hobbyists and the
>educational community.  Users of Metrowerks' Open-Source Pascal
>compiler who graduate onto embedded systems development will already be
>familiar with Metrowerks and thereby be more inclined to recommend
>using CodeWarrior.
>
>4.  An opportunity becomes available from the Mac community to build an
>x86 back-end compiler for the Mac, allowing Mac/Pascal users to be
>up-to-date on creating modern applications.
>
>5.  As the Pascal front-end language compiler is processor-agnostic,
>developers on a wide range of systems could use this fron-end compiler
>for back-ends of and number of environments.
>
>Since MWRon no longer acts as the speaker for the Mac community
>(although perhaps he is still reading this?), I thought I'd pass this
>along to the newsgroup at large, to see if anyone else feels that this
>would be of value.  If so, I would like to know what appropriate
>individuals left at metrowerks that this suggestion should go to.
>
>Thanks again,
>
>Jonathan Hoyle
>

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 Ron Liechty - ron.liechty@freescale.com - http://www.codewarrior.com