Re: [RexxLA] Mailing list shadowed by Yahoo Groups? - cross post to Ibm-NetRexx

[Kermit Kiser]

  All;

I have been wanting to raise the question: "Is Rexx too closed?"

This seems like a good point to bring it up.

With the open sourcing of ooRexx and the hopefully soon open sourcing of
NetRexx, Rexx seems to be heading in a good direction with community
support and perhaps a more permanent future. But I don't know of any
statistics that tell if Rexx usage (any or all dialects) is growing or
declining so I still worry at times about the long term viability of
Rexx. I suspect that some Rexx programmers view the language as a
competitive advantage and don't want everyone to know it, but my concern
is more with being able to use it in all future environments with full
support for all needed features. (I am trying to figure out how to use
NetRexx for Android programing at the moment.) I think that future
requires a strong and growing community.

I have no particular interest in converting programmers to Rexx - if the
language is good enough to provide a competitive advantage, that will
happen anyway. And if it is open in development and support, we can keep
it up to date or even ahead in useful features. And if people still want
to program in unreadable languages (cough *perl* cough ;-) that is fine
for them. But do those competitive languages keep their discussion lists
secret? I have no problem with restricting the discussions on the RexxLA
list to paying members and letting others go to comp.lang.rexx, but I
also have no problem with allowing the general public to follow the list
because perhaps some of them will become more interested in Rexx and
join or even go on to become developers or support providers for Rexx
itself someday.

One of my main concerns is about the possible imminent demise of the
Ibm-netrexx list when NetRexx becomes open source. There has been no
discussion of a replacement list yet or even about a NetRexx web site or
NetRexx repository (ala CPAN). Will NetRexx discussion become closed
like RexxLA or remain open? Will it become buried in the more general
RexxLA discussion list? A closed environment bothers me because it
signals a direction leading to a shrinking user base and even the
possibility of the language dying out over time as people shift to more
popular languages with up to date tools and support libraries and more
open discussions.

Back to the immediate topic - should we encourage replicating the RexxLA
list traffic to other forums? I vote yes if anyone is interested in voting.

Thanks for listening to today's soap box! More to follow, no doubt.

-- Kermit


On 11/26/2009 10:15 PM, Sahananda (Jon) Wolfers wrote:

> Hi Les,
>
> It seems that since september 2008, Tom Lee Mullins has been
> forwarding RexxLa posts to what looks like his own Yahoo group
> dedicated to things OS/2ish.
>
> I sent him the following message
>
>     Hi Tom,
>
>     I wonder if you are aware that you are forwarding posts to the
>     RexxLa Mailing lists to os3Free Yahoo group and in doing so
>     putting what is basically a closed discussion group in the Public
>     Domain.
>
>     I am writing to you as a fellow member of RexxLa (I assume you
>     must be one to get the posts in the first place) to ask you to
>     either stop doing it, or explain on the list why you are doing it.
>
>     I imagine that many people like the RexxLa group because of it's
>     in-house nature.  They can ask questions without inhibition
>     because they have a feel for the friendly community that is going
>     to see their questions and respond.  If they wanted the world to
>     see they could post on comp.lang.rexx or one of the other usenet
>     groups.
>
>     thanks,
>
>     Jon
>
>
> We will have to see how he responds and then take things from there.
>
> Jon
>
> 2009/11/27 Les Koehler <[hidden email]
> <mailto:[hidden email]>>
>
>     I can't answer your question, but what about the Yahoo
>     shadowing?
>
>     Les
>
>     John Timmons wrote:
>     > Les,
>     >
>     >      I looked at that website and the message there reminded of
>     a question that's been nagging me...why not create PDS-style
>     datasets on Windows (et al.) consisting of source files...maybe
>     ooRexx, maybe some other interpreter-friendly language, but
>     collected into a "PSL" file (Partitioned Source Library), to be
>     accessed by entry-point/source module name at interpret time. Is
>     this something that could be front-ended onto the ooRexx
>     interpreter? It would minimize all those ::requires statements,
>     and CLASS files could be collected into the Library(s), as well as
>     ::routine and ::method code...I don't know...would this cause a
>     problem with the Object-oriented paradigm?
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     > John T.
>     >
>     >
>     >> Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:22:04 -0500
>     >> From: [hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>
>     >> To: [hidden email]
>     <mailto:[hidden email]>
>     >> Subject: Re: [RexxLA] Mailing list shadowed by Yahoo Groups?
>     >>
>     >> Oops! Forgot to mention that it was one of my posts to the
>     >> mailing list that was on Yahoo Groups. Found many others also!
>     >>
>     >> Les Koehler wrote:
>     >>> I did a Google search on 'vmrexx' out of curiosity and one
>     >>> of the hits was:
>     >>> http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/os3free/message/1931
>     >>>
>     >>> How did it get there?
>     >>>
>     >>> Les
>     >>> _______________________________________________
>     >>> rexxla-members mailing list --
>     mailto:[hidden email]
>     <mailto:[hidden email]>
>     >>> http://rice.safedataisp.net/mailman/listinfo/rexxla-members
>     >>>
>     >> _______________________________________________
>     >> rexxla-members mailing list --
>     mailto:[hidden email]
>     <mailto:[hidden email]>
>     >> http://rice.safedataisp.net/mailman/listinfo/rexxla-members
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     >
>     > _______________________________________________
>     > rexxla-members mailing list --
>     mailto:[hidden email]
>     <mailto:[hidden email]>
>     > http://rice.safedataisp.net/mailman/listinfo/rexxla-members
>     _______________________________________________
>     rexxla-members mailing list --
>     mailto:[hidden email]
>     <mailto:[hidden email]>
>     http://rice.safedataisp.net/mailman/listinfo/rexxla-members
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> rexxla-members mailing list -- mailto:[hidden email]
> http://rice.safedataisp.net/mailman/listinfo/rexxla-members
>  

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://ns.hursley.ibm.com/pipermail/ibm-netrexx/attachments/20091127/56ba5ee3/attachment-0001.html