Summer of code went really well. I had a fantastic student that contributed so much.
I'd love to have more contributors on Hackety. Development is basically frozen while we re-write Shoes to pay off the technical debt involved. (CORRUPTION really spoke to me...) So the best way to help is to get on https://github.com/shoes/shoes4 and shoes@librelist.com and start pitching in!
Hey, you're going the JRuby route? Are you using Swing and what-not to get rid of the platform specific code? How's it working out? I'll grab the source and see if there's anything I can help with. I don't get a lot of time away from my day-job while my children are so young, but as they grow up Hackety Hack is the sort of project I'd very much like to help out with.
When I first started hacking on Shoes, it took me 6 months to compile. o_O.
We are going a few routes:
1) The first iteration will be JRuby + SWT.
2) It's written in a way that the DSL is separate from the backend, so that SWT can be swapped out for Swing or whatever.
3) Same with the Ruby: ideally, someday we can move back to an embedded MRI.
It's working out pretty well so far, a lot of the example code runs.
Due to my Shoes burnout, I'm playing semi-absent benevolent dictator for now. A great team of people is doing all of the actual work.
So I've been googling around and I think I've got most of the pieces of this puzzle figured out (_why was a great, eccentric developer, he disappeared and commited info-suicide).
But what I don't get is why the author of this article waited a year ('So I marked my calendar for the 18th, and waited. That was yesterday.') --- What indication did he have to mark his calendar for the 18th (was this an anniversary?)
I'm so very confused about this, but I'm intrigued.
Jan. 2013 was _why's first reappearance. He had actually updated his website with the first couple entries in the print queue in December, but no one noticed until January. After people noticed ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5015087 ), _why started updating it with more pages in the print queue, one of which said the print queue was going down until April 18, and would then be up during the hours of 4 to 12. Which sounded like _why was going to do something big that day.
As far as I'm concerned, DISCLAIMER, (and to a lesser extent HELLOYES) which I quoted below, wraps up the story and allows us to all stop wondering and move forward.
It's weird to see people so flagrantly posting stuff without a copyright license. Is it just because _why only put their past work on the internet temporarily that people feel like it's OK to distribute this new stuff freely?
"Now I want to make it perfectly clear that these papers
and all my other works in life belong to the general
public. In fact, I also would like to turn myself over to
all of you as well. This was actually done several years
ago, but in an embarassingly disorganized manner. I like
what you've done with the character, but I'd like to step
into his tattered suit for the next hundred pages and a
day. And after that, I'm yours again. Do what you must
do! I always enjoy seeing what happens to me."
Copyright is automatic and does not require a visible license. Any provided licenses are just that, a license, they do not strengthen, remove nor water down copyright.
E.g. If you post something under a CC attribution license, and someone shares it without attribution then they are breaking copyright, not breaking the license. They aren't licensed.
On the other hand, if no license at all is posted, this isn't a right to copy or derive works, there is automatic copyright on the works.
By the way, I'd love to contribute to Hackety Hack :)