Chez Scheme is now free • Hacker News Board

Re: Chez Scheme is now free

#31

Post by brudgers » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #18

FraaJad wrote: post #2

IIRC, this was a high performance scheme developed at Indiana University that was closed source for a long time. Good on Cisco for open sourcing it. I'm interested to hear what regular scheme programmers feel about this news.

It's massively strange that this was closed source while at a public university, and open source under a public company.

US universities have entire departments devoted to technology licensing. The default to secrecy may be an artifact of their historic reliance on defense agency funding for technical projects and the bureaucratic staffing for paperwork heavy processes.

On the other hand, there's an intellectual idea that for many companies, existing software should perhaps be seen as a liability in double entry accounting due to it's need for ongoing maintenance, upgrades, potential for catastrophic failure, and the cost associated with alterations for new business processes.

Companies offload some of those costs by open sourcing and allowing developers to happily "give back" to their bottom line.

Re: Chez Scheme is now free

#32

Post by jordigh » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

sheepleherd wrote: post #29

For people interested in the legalities of licenses, it's released under the Apache License 2.0 which is a "free software" opensource license that is compatible when combined with GPL3, but not with GPL 1 or 2. the Apache 2.0 license includes not just copyright but patent licensing, so the software will contain no hidden patent restrictions for patents owned by the creators and contributors.

Why did you quote free software but not opensource? I am curious to know what the difference in your writing intended to convey.

Re: Chez Scheme is now free

#33

Post by cm3 » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #28

cm3 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TMSC?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC Biggest "independent" semiconductor foundry company (independent = they make customer designs, not their own)

I guessed TSMC myself but wasn't sure it's not some EE acronym I'm unaware of.

Re: Chez Scheme is now free

#34

Post by TuringTest » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 4:51 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #32

sheepleherd wrote: post #29

For people interested in the legalities of licenses, it's released under the Apache License 2.0 which is a "free software" opensource license that is compatible when combined with GPL3, but not with GPL 1 or 2. the Apache 2.0 license includes not just copyright but patent licensing, so the software will contain no hidden patent restrictions for patents owned by the creators and contributors.

Why did you quote free software but not opensource? I am curious to know what the difference in your writing intended to convey.

That may be because "free software" is still an ambiguous term, while open source is relatively unambiguous. I prefer to use Free Software as my disambiguator of choice, but I understand the GP using the other form, and occasionally use it myself.

Re: Chez Scheme is now free

#35

Post by drudru11 » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

iheartmemcache wrote: post #22

brianobush wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at scheme.com, you will see Copyright © 2011 Cadence Research Systems. Cisco bought Cadence back in 2012.

(Cadence for those who don't know are basically the equivalent of SolidWorks for anything in EE. They are the only company ( maybe Synopsis or Mentor, but I think there are a few holes here and there) on the planet that lets you go from designing something as simple and low level as an analog jellybean op-amp (with state of the art EM and S-param simulation) and verification, to RTL design (full power simulation and…

Cool - was it used as a scripting language or for the core of the system?

Re: Chez Scheme is now free

#36

Post by rohwer » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

Dybvig's compiler course was exemplary. Say what you may about Scheme, you learned so much more in those classes. His Scheme Programming Language book is highly recommended. Especially check out his extended examples chapter: http://www.scheme.com/tspl4/examples.html#./examples:h0

Re: Chez Scheme is now free

#37

Post by sesquipedalian » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

FraaJad wrote: post #2

IIRC, this was a high performance scheme developed at Indiana University that was closed source for a long time. Good on Cisco for open sourcing it. I'm interested to hear what regular scheme programmers feel about this news.

I'm very excited about this. I've been using Chez as my performance benchmark target for my own Scheme implementation.

Re: Chez Scheme is now free

#38

Post by jordigh » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

TuringTest wrote: post #34

jordigh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you quote free software but not opensource? I am curious to know what the difference in your writing intended to convey.

That may be because "free software" is still an ambiguous term, while open source is relatively unambiguous. I prefer to use Free Software as my disambiguator of choice, but I understand the GP using the other form, and occasionally use it myself.

In my experience, people frequently think that "open source" means a bunch of different things, such as "visible source code" (and nothing more) or "opposite of commercial" (i.e. no money allowed) or "inviting public participation" (as in "open source governance").

Re: Chez Scheme is now free

#39

Post by j-pb » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

webkike wrote: post #9

j-pb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compiler. Chez scheme is compiled with a nano-pass compiler. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os7FE3J-U5Q

Compiler what? I simply said that I enjoyed writing fast scheme interpreters.

You said it again. It's a compiler, not an interpreter.

Re: Chez Scheme is now free

#40

Post by jordigh » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #31

mathattack wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's massively strange that this was closed source while at a public university, and open source under a public company.

US universities have entire departments devoted to technology licensing. The default to secrecy may be an artifact of their historic reliance on defense agency funding for technical projects and the bureaucratic staffing for paperwork heavy processes. On the other hand, there's an intellectual idea that for many companies, existing software should perhaps be seen as a liability in double entry accounting due to it's…

Can you explain that a bit more? How does a company offload costs by freeing their software? Surely they're not expecting to rely on public contributions to reduce maintenance costs, are they?