Re: [Caml-list] Re: Hash clash in polymorphic variants

[Kuba Ober <ober.14@osu.edu>]

> > > . Rich libraries are incredibly important and OCaml has the potential
> > > to become a hugely successful commercial platform where people can buy
> > > and sell cross-platform libraries but OCaml needs support for shared
> > > run-time DLLs (or something equivalent) this before this can happen.
> >
> > Do you dream or what?
> >
> > I don't think that selling libraries in binary form is that important...
> > It is difficult anyway to do that, and why do you expect you could be
> > successful in a niche language? As customer I would demand to get the
> > source code - to lower the risks of the investment into a small
> > platform.
>
> Yeah, I wouldn't be using Qt if there was no source code for it. Quite a
> few times over the years I had to tweak away at the implementation details.
>
> In fact, I would never specify *any* mission-critical libraries or
> frameworks if they didn't come with full sources.

In other words, Jon: if you tried to sell me source-code-less libraries, I 
simply wouldn't buy, and no amount of persuading could change that. I'd still 
keep buying your books, though :)

Just look at what happened to scores of Delphi and OCX controls which became 
abandonware, and how much of this stuff eventually had to be simply 
reimplemented by the same people who originally bought the controls not to 
implement them in the first place. I detest closed-source controls and 
libraries, I simply don't use them. The whole idea of "here's the OCX and a 
typelib, and a help file, take it or leave it" is preposterous. Well, maybe 
it's fine if you're being contracted for a one-off job where the payee has no 
clue, and your morals don't seem to interfere -- sure then you can reuse all 
the source-less crap you want. But as a part of a long term strategy? No way.

If there was one decision Trolls made right, it was to include the source 
code.

Cheers, Kuba