OxygenBasic and BCX - powerful teamwork?

[Aurel]

I really dont get it why someone need or whish to use GUI api wrapper from some
other programming language in this case BCX whan you can copy few functions from VB
and create your own gui api include file..
well...i am honest like always i am.. and i like james work and enthusiasm
same as Mike work on FBSL...but what's the worth when you often can find people
who claim that are expert in some things / for example in bp.org shit forum /
and in the same time never code program bigger than 100 lines or worst just copy/paste
someone else work...fukkkk

[Mike Lobanovsky]

James,

Just received this from MR. BCX:

Not only can the direct translations be used royalty free, parts of the translator itself can be freely reused, so long as a directly competing "BCX-like" product which is a pretty broad definition.

I must confess my English does not permit me to deduct/guess the true meaning of that quotation.

1. I was not talking about royalty or no royalty in my arguments. I was talking about the legal status of the library part of BCX source code alone translated (whether using BCX as a translation instrument or manually) to ANSI C and/or OxygenBasic vocabulary and syntax with a view to creating a derivative dynamically and/or statically linkable library for use in projects that are not GNU GPL'ed but rather Public Domain-licensed, which means they do not require any obligatory reference to their BCX ancestry whatsoever and thus do not obey the requirement of making their source code obligatorily open to anyone if the project developer does not want them to be open for any reason, exclusively at his own (and nobody else's) option.

2. The "..., so long as a directly competing "BCX-like" product which is a pretty broad definition." portion does not look like a complete English sentence to me, which makes it impossible for me to get Mr Diggins' reasoning. Without that reasoning that's sufficiently substantiated in common parlance, I am afraid I will not be able to rely on that statement as a whole because AFAIK Mr Diggins isn't a lawer either nor is he in a position to speak on behalf of each and every contributor to the GNU GPL BCX project especially when what he apparently is trying to convey seems so contradictory to the spirit and letter of GNU GPL.

Please get me right; under no circumstance am I personally going to use any bit of BCX code in any form in my projects regardless of what language it is going to be written in and regardless of whoever says what on its license coverage. But once this issue has been brought to our attention by the original poster, Roland a.k.a. Arnold, it would be great to have it straightened out to the maximum extent possible for the benefit of other BCX/BC9/UBXWX/MBC/O2 users.

[Charles Pegge]

Legal opinion may be sought from these noble lords:

[Arnold]

Hello,

I never thought that I would be worried about licences some day.

As far as I am concerned my favourite language is Oxygenbasic because it combines several features: it can understand assembler, some Basic-like and some C-like syntax. It can be used nearly as an interpreter, it can be embedded in other applications and it can create standalone 32/64 bit executables and DLLs. It is a masterpiece of code and Charles has generously made available the source code. (Although most of it I would not understand). For me it is a great tool to re/learn about programming principles. Similar projects for me would be FreeBasic, Scriptbasic, GCC/TCC, Euphoria. I wished I would have more time.

BCX is similar. It is a great tool to translate Basic-like programs into C-code. It has been used for console and gui applications since many years. It is a great tool to learn about Basic and to learn about C, it has shown it's practicability many times over the years. And the source code is available too.

Regarding Windows programming: the principles for using the Windows Api are determined (see e.g. Microsoft Win32 Programmer's Reference) and every language must follow these conventions. OxygenBasic has many gui examples which show the principles.

But the BCX Runtime can achieve still more - it is a sophisticated system of routines which complement each other, but they do not restrict a programmer from adding his own ideas. And I still think using OxygenBasic with BCX could be an interesting way of using a Gui framework. It would be one possible way, using e.g. awinh.inc, SDL, OpenGl are other ways. There is so much possible with OxygenBasic.

For me this is a learning project with nonprofit purpose. I think I will add some more functions to the project (as said it is in a beginning phase) and will provide the two licences with it. If there is no objection I will then upload it. And maybe I will get some help if I do major logical mistakes.

Roland