You don't use open source software because it's better (it usually isn't).
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@eedly HECK! I'm kinda sick today and off my game. Also I thought Macromedia was good.
@mcc@mastodon.social @eedly@mindly.social Back when Macromedia owned the Flash IP people actually wanted to use it but the player was crap, and they would not let people to make their own to have total control over the platform.
The result is it died.
Now you can write your own player but nobody cares anymore, we have WebGL.
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@LordCaramac @Lenni @RogerBW @mcc I got the source to compile on my 64-bit Debian Trixie with gcc 14 with some minor tweaking: https://codeberg.org/indigoparadox/sapphire
It seems to run enough to get a REPL going, but I haven't played with it yet. There's some gnarly pointer/int math going on so who knows how it'll fare in 64-bit land?
@indigoparadox @Lenni @RogerBW @mcc Thanks. I think the last time I wrote any code in C was some 15 years ago; the entire number of C lines I have written in my life is probably less than 3000, and I have forgotten most of what little I used to know about GCC, and that was ages ago.
I'm much more familiar with Pascal and Python, I suck at Java, and I could probably still do a lot of silly things in GW-BASIC because that's what came with my first MS-DOS PC. I had to learn some Haskell at uni, but I never used it again and forgot almost everything. I also had to learn C++ and forgot most about it, although its similarity to Java means that I probably remember more than I think, but I stink when it comes to C++.
I mostly write single purpose command line tools in Pascal or Python for my own purposes, and most of those get called by bash scripts. -
@LordCaramac @Lenni @RogerBW @mcc I got the source to compile on my 64-bit Debian Trixie with gcc 14 with some minor tweaking: https://codeberg.org/indigoparadox/sapphire
It seems to run enough to get a REPL going, but I haven't played with it yet. There's some gnarly pointer/int math going on so who knows how it'll fare in 64-bit land?
@indigoparadox@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social @LordCaramac@discordian.social @Lenni@fosstodon.org @RogerBW@discordian.social You can compile 32bit if you insist. Many distributions still support it, at least on x86.
Also the way to do the global variable is you put an extern declaration in the header, and non-extern declaration in one C file. -
@LordCaramac @mcc This. The depth of today's software stack, even in OSS, is enormous, and nearly everything is on a mandatory-update treadmill thanks to compiler and runtime developers no longer caring about backward compatibility. And you can't just not update because everything is exposed to network-borne threats (and other stuff you want/need to run requires newer dependencies).
I've gotten saltier about this in the past 20 years.
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@crankylinuxuser @dbat @mcc he's just agreeing with the post
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@indigoparadox@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social @LordCaramac@discordian.social @Lenni@fosstodon.org @RogerBW@discordian.social You can compile 32bit if you insist. Many distributions still support it, at least on x86.
Also the way to do the global variable is you put an extern declaration in the header, and non-extern declaration in one C file. @bunny @mcc @indigoparadox @Lenni @RogerBW I'll give it a try later, but right now I'm too busy playing with my kitten Momo who had to visit the strange humans in the scary house full of strange animals and weird chemical smells who stuck her with needles earlier today. It definitely sounds nice to play with Sapphire again. It's just a completely different sort of sound design compared to my usual synths (mostly ancient digital synths from the 1980s and 1990s).
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You don't use open source software because it's better (it usually isn't).
You don't use open source software because it's freer (it only sometimes is).
You don't use open source software because it's got better politics (it isn't always).
You use open source software because *it is the only option*. In the long run, if it isn't open source, it doesn't exist.
image source: keithstack.com
@mcc@mastodon.social What Adobe is doing to Animate is like if Microsoft suddenly shot Windows in the nuts and then said it would be dead in five minutes.
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@indigoparadox@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social @LordCaramac@discordian.social @Lenni@fosstodon.org @RogerBW@discordian.social You can compile 32bit if you insist. Many distributions still support it, at least on x86.
Also the way to do the global variable is you put an extern declaration in the header, and non-extern declaration in one C file. @bunny @mcc @LordCaramac @Lenni @RogerBW On the first pass, I wanted to modify the original source as little as possible.
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@crankylinuxuser @dbat @mcc he's just agreeing with the post
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@dmaonR I would need a Linux from ~2008 for that, I think.
@LordCaramac The oldest liveCD I could find was Debian5 from 2009. there are 3 binaries in the tgz. all from 1998!. one is windows the other two are linux. I didn't try compiling. the binary src/sapphire maybe works? I don't know what I am looking at.
old debian: https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/
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@LordCaramac The oldest liveCD I could find was Debian5 from 2009. there are 3 binaries in the tgz. all from 1998!. one is windows the other two are linux. I didn't try compiling. the binary src/sapphire maybe works? I don't know what I am looking at.
old debian: https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/
@dmaonR I might try using the .exe with Wine. I sometimes use windows binaries from around the turn of the millennium with Wine.
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You don't use open source software because it's better (it usually isn't).
You don't use open source software because it's freer (it only sometimes is).
You don't use open source software because it's got better politics (it isn't always).
You use open source software because *it is the only option*. In the long run, if it isn't open source, it doesn't exist.
image source: keithstack.com
@mcc I use open source software because it's better. Often it's better for the reason you are posting, often it's just higher quality software. Linux for example, is vastly superior to Windows and OSX. 90% of what I use computers for wouldn't even be possible on those operating systems. I have access to expansive open source code libraries that make my computing experience basically what I can imagine doing with a computer.
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You don't use open source software because it's better (it usually isn't).
You don't use open source software because it's freer (it only sometimes is).
You don't use open source software because it's got better politics (it isn't always).
You use open source software because *it is the only option*. In the long run, if it isn't open source, it doesn't exist.
image source: keithstack.com
@mcc Open-source software can cease to exist anytime too - due maintainers burnout under burden of unpaid work, for example. Or by sme other reasons. More chances if project managed by some group of people/organization as foundation with proper measures for longevity.
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You don't use open source software because it's better (it usually isn't).
You don't use open source software because it's freer (it only sometimes is).
You don't use open source software because it's got better politics (it isn't always).
You use open source software because *it is the only option*. In the long run, if it isn't open source, it doesn't exist.
image source: keithstack.com
@mcc I use open source software because I don't trust code I'm not allowed to read. -
@mcc Open-source software can cease to exist anytime too - due maintainers burnout under burden of unpaid work, for example. Or by sme other reasons. More chances if project managed by some group of people/organization as foundation with proper measures for longevity.
@koteisaev @mcc that's literally not true lol, unless you consider active development and updates a prerequisite to "existing". even if a sole maintainer of open source software is hit by a bus the code is still out there in the public and usable. even if there's an attempt made to bury it due to some kind of corporate capture, if it's widely used software it likely exists on many people's computers and in various web archives, and if it's published under an open source license, there is absolutely nothing stopping people from re-uploading it.
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You don't use open source software because it's better (it usually isn't).
You don't use open source software because it's freer (it only sometimes is).
You don't use open source software because it's got better politics (it isn't always).
You use open source software because *it is the only option*. In the long run, if it isn't open source, it doesn't exist.
image source: keithstack.com
@mcc ehh…not really? Some of it is definitely better. Quite a lot of backend software is both open source. Not just that either. There are a lot of instances where you use open source because it’s the best thing out there. I mean I get where you are coming from, but credit where it’s due. IBM doesn’t buy Redhat because it’s second best. Open source is under funded, under appreciated, and to a large extent out of sight, but there is real quality/talent/ideas there.
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@RogerBW @LordCaramac @mcc It doesn't take a group. All it takes someone who goes on a "I can get this working again" frenzy for a weekend. Once it compiles and works again, updating and extending it, is easy.
@attilakinali
As seen in this thread, actually
@RogerBW @LordCaramac @mcc -
As someone who was a true devotee of FutureWave SmartSketch (which became FutureSplash Animator, which became Macromedia Shockwave Flash, which became Adobe Flash, which became Adobe Animator) my sorrow is incalculable. Every day I long for software I had in the 90s which I can't find anything as good as today.
@mcc I developed a web site very early in my career using Future Splash Animator. In some ways the technology was way ahead of its time.
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@mcc Open-source software can cease to exist anytime too - due maintainers burnout under burden of unpaid work, for example. Or by sme other reasons. More chances if project managed by some group of people/organization as foundation with proper measures for longevity.
@koteisaev @mcc the single fact that the source code is available means that if the project was abandoned someone, someday, can pick up where it had stopped.
I agree this is not the case all the time, but the probability for this to happen is a lot higher than a closed source project to be handed to another company / team.
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@tsukaj @mcc @crankylinuxuser yeah, agreeing with post. Miss 90s software and Flash. Amen in this way might be a localism.
