Re: Xy Manuals Online (Was undocumented define functions)

[Peter Evans peterev@xxxxxxxx]

Carter Campbell's friend suggested some time ago

>that some of the list members get togther and purchase the rights to
>XyIII+ and extend it ourselves or donate it to the public domain.

CC himself:

>I would be more than willing to kick in some money and ensure the existance
>of the "The Only True Xy" (no offence to TTG meant). I still use Xy
>extensively (as of course we all do), even though I have to write a lot of
>my project material in Word or Frame.

Perhaps it's because I don't have to use Word, Pagemaker, Framemaker,
Quark, etc. etc., but do have to make marks on paper with some concessions
to elegance, that I use XyWin and no longer use any of its predecessors.
(The high speed of my computer is probably also a factor.) Thus, though I
view it with nostalgia and respect, "the one true Xy" is a bit of an
irrelevance to me. I'd be willing to help pay for it, but not all that
much, as I can't see myself or many others benefiting from it within any
timeframe that makes sense in computerdom.

Xy4, with Windows on top or the possibility of another GUI riveted onto it,
is a different matter. I'd pay. (I'm not interested in Xy4OS/2 because I
don't use OS/2; and I use Win95 instead because I'm tired of kicking
against the pricks. I hope OS/2 flourishes and wish anyone well with it,
but suggest that Linux and, um, XyPosix [?] might have a stronger chance of
surviving the Microsoft juggernaut.)

When I--I think it was me--first suggested or resuggested that TTG donated
Xy3 to FSF, I must admit that I did so with as little thought as I usually
muster when suggesting that people other than myself do charitable deeds. I
know what FSF stands for and I like their copyleft statement, but (because
I'm not a programmer and don't use any variety of UNIX) I'm only familiar
with a very few of their productions. And of these, at least one (JWP, a
Japanese text editor) is far from a paragon of efficient, bug-free coding.
So I suppose I'd want to know a bit more about what FSF actually does, as
well as what it stands for, before handing over a major dollop of dosh for
the donation to it of XyAnything.

Presumably FSF has no funds for the rewriting of software and instead
depends on the enthusiasm, competence and peer-pressure of its volunteers.
Therefore (to pursue the pipedream), it might indeed make sense to pay for
some professional tweaking of XyWhatever before handing it over. However,
to hang on to the rights thereafter seems much more complex than to hand
the lot to FSF--there'd be communication problems among the "syndics" at
best and squabbles at worst. (Once it became GNUxy, it would be copyleft
and an individual or group here would still be able to fiddle with it
further.)

Who has the rights to Nota Bene, and how might this program fit into this
plot we're hatching?