MC IDE, FreeGUI and an xCard job

[Robert Brenstein]

>Alain Farmer wrote:
>...
>>  I've got a paying customer who wants to invest in the
>>  development of a MetaCard-based authoring system like
>>  MetaCard or RunRev, but it has to be even simpler than
>>  both of these. Given that I'm the author of the
>>  current incarnation of FreeGUI, e.g. a MetaCard-based
>>  clone of HyperCard, it should not be surprising that I
>>  suggested FreeGUI to this customer. He accepted! This
>>  means that he will be investing money in the
>>  development of FreeGUI to make it useable and easy
>>  enough for this customer's target audience :
>>  administrators, teachers and students in 500 schools
>>  in Quebec. No, it's not a typo, nor is it a mistake
>>  ... *500* schools will be using it as early as this
>>  coming summer (thousands of teachers and students). A
>>  total breakthrough!  :))
>
>Especially for RunRev Ltd.   500 site licenses for the engine will be very
>welcome there, and the visibility benefits us all.  Congratulations.

That is surely good news for Rev although I am not so sure that they 
are equally happy that FreeRev will be the most visible part. It will 
be really great if the customer support allows Allan to bring FreeGUI 
to official release. I think it deserves to be used by more people.

>...
>>  * FreeGUI and MC-IDE have a similar goal : to develop
>>  and maintain a free open-source alternative IDE for
>>  the MC-engine. Our efforts could therefore be
>>  coordinated in order to synergize both our projects,
>  > or merged together to form ONE stronger project.
>
>How this project coordinates with the needs of MC IDE audience will of
>course depend on the details of your design.  But the spirit of sharing is
>appreciated, and if the open source license chosen for you project will be
>as liberal as the X11 license which governs the MC IDE itself I'm happy to
>help with such coordination if I can, whether as poohbah or in any other
>contributor role.
>

As someone who is somewhat familiar with FreeGUI besides MC and HC, I 
believe that it will be worth to keep FreeGUI as a separate product, 
cross-polination and collaboration between FreeGUI and MC IDE not 
excluding.

Rev's IDE is... well  Rev's IDE, the default now. The spartan (let' 
not start that discussion again :) MC IDE is for certain users only, 
particularly advanced users and those that do not like too many 
palettes and windows. FreeGUI brings the simplicity and different 
tradition and may be quite appealing to those UI users that Dan 
Shafer is concerned about, but may slow down advanced MC users. In 
other words, me thinks that having three IDE's can benefit us all.

Robert Brenstein