🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> "John" == John D. Mitchell <johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
	[stuff deleted]
  John> I believe that Dylan is trademarked by Apple.  That's why the free
  John> implementation of a language based on the Dylan Language Manual is called
  John> "Thomas" (or somesuch).  Dylan most certainly *not* a free language.  I
  John> recall some mention of certification of language implementations by Apple.

The Dylan *name* is trademarked just as UNIX is trademarked by AT&T. Apple
will have to actively protect to maintain it as such so you can expect some
litigation down the road. The validation suite is supposedly to ensure that
anyone using the name Dylan meets whatever specifications Apple sets out
for the language. You'll have to meet it to at least have a shot at using
the Dylan trademark.

Having said all that, you miss the point of Thomas. Anybody can get the
Dylan manual and implement a language that meets that specification. I
imagine that the validation suite will be publically available so you can
even see if your implementation is up to "snuff". But unless you go begging
to Apple you can't call it Dylan.

In my book that means the word "Dylan" isn't free, but the language is. At
least until Congress gets through mucking up the copyright and patent laws.

Thomas proves this point eminently. 

  John> I, for one, believe that Dylan is mostly just a tool for Apple to get
  John> people locked into their universe by promising all sorts of
  John> performance/abilities/etc. on hardware that has yet to be shown (Newton)
	[stuff deleted]
  John> The Dylan Language Manual ain't all that great and I don't find anything in
  John> the language that makes it worth locking myself to Apple and if you want a
  John> free version, somebody has already done it so why spend the time and effort?

The current Thomas implementation isn't exactly a speed burner, but people
can work on it, or write their own implementations, or whatever. But as far
as I can tell, Apple has no means by which to "lock" people into their
hardware using a language. People lock themselves in when they *must* have
the language, but don't want to go to the trouble of implementing it
themselves. 

Technically speaking, there are some interesting ideas in Dylan and a FSF
implementation would be another datapoint. But I doubt if there will be
many takers.




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