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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: What's WRONG with Forth?
Message-ID: <2820.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 27 May 91 18:55:34 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.
Lines: 45

Category 2,  Topic 9
Message 106       Mon May 27, 1991
D.RUFFER [Dennis]            at 03:04 EDT
 
Re: B.RODRIGUEZ2 [Brad]

 > But the problem is, can Forth Inc. claim that "my" CREATE and
 > colon are in fact derived from theirs?

Those are not the words they are worried about Brad.  In fact, if you create
your own for your users can use you might be able to technically "get around"
the Forth Inc. restrictions.  Yes, I think it would be safe to say that almost
all of us have been influenced by Chuck's original versions.  It would be very
hard for a Forth interpreter or compiler to be claimed to be proprietary.

 > especially when I must legally deliver clear title to the
 > software I'm producing.

Agreed, and I took the trouble to ask Elizabeth about _exactly_ what was
comsidered to be proprietary in polyFORTH.  The answer was basically the
multitasker, vocabularies and the dbms.  However, that was quite a few years
ago, and I have no idea what her answer would be today.  Anyone who wants to
"sell" the internals, really needs to talk to her personally.  In almost all
cases, I'm sure some kind of deal can be worked out to let each have what they
need.

Re: F.SERGEANT [Frank]

 > Dennis, does this mean that polyFORTH does not come with complete
 > source code?  Just the source for the electives?

No Frank, Brad's question has been about what he can give the end user access
to.  PolyFORTH comes with _complete_ source code to the "target" system (i.e.
an RTX system does not contain the 8086 host system's nucleus, but the 8086
system does).

This discussion has been about how much of that system our customers can give
to their customers.

   {B-{)>   DaR
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