PowerBASIC

[Mike Lobanovsky]

OxygenBASIC stays OxygenBASIC, PB stays PB. Apart from the name, there is nothing subject to copyright law here. You can't claim ownership of the language vocabulary, semantics, or behavior. You can only claim ownership of particular implementation. The BZ->Drake code implements the language functionality in its own manner while we'll be implementing the same in our own way.

What I suggest is called clean room design that's recognized, and protected, by the US law as a fair means of industrial competition. A vivid and quite successful example of clean room design is ReactOS, a public open source attempt to re-create MS Windows NT platform from ground up.

There is not a thing in PB that Bob Zale or the Drakes could claim US patents for.

[JRS]

I wonder how much money Bob Zale stuck people like Eric Pearson for? Did Drake assume PB's debt?

[Mike Lobanovsky]

John,

Gossip and guesswork is exactly what I'm sick and tired of. That's what my message on José's forum that you quoted had been about.

[JRS]

My point is Zale didn't die a saint. There is no reason to idolize him now.

[Mike Lobanovsky]

I am not idolizing anyone. Nothing personal, just business, is all.

[jcfuller]

Mike,
  A huge segment of Pb users are DDT'ers and it would seem that functionality would have to be implemented. Wouldn't that be grounds for infringement?

James

[Mike Lobanovsky]

No James,

DDT is just a subset of language vocabulary to manipulate the MS windowing framework. Regard it as an agglomeration of high-level macros built on top of Windows SDK to abstract from the low-level C paraphernalia and thus simplify the use of Windows GUI. Every other GUI library like IUP, wxWidgets and dozens of others (including BCX/BC9 GUI) is a DDT of sorts though each of course at its own level of abstraction.

As I said, re-implementing keyword-for-keyword functionality under a clean room environment isn't infringement. All those GUIs amount to the native WinAPI one way or another in the long run. Infringement is doing the same using the exact same implementation language and code flow.

Using O2 (and the FB translator it is written in!) and Windows SDK and guessing the code flow in the black box of PB assembly according to the language description, done by the dev team who have never had a chance to peep into Bob Zale's original sources, would be vanilla clean room development.

I own the PB documentation (help files) legally and so do you or José or many others. But any other potential dev team member who isn't a legal PB copy owner can still download them now legal and free from the PB site.

[JRS]

Interesting that there is no reference to PowerBASIC on the Drake Software site.

[Mike Lobanovsky]

Bottom drawer. Premium grade steel lock. Key thrown far into the Little Tennessee River.

[chrisc]

Yeah, PB might be locked up but it also has buried its users alive.

What you capable O2 members should do is to create a visual designer IDE similar to EzGui, so that newbies
like myself can create forms and dialogs with ease.  It would be easier to learn a language with a visual form
like VB6 then to hardcode the old way.

What we need is something that we can create a dialog, and with ability add and buttons, combobox, option and checkbox
into this dialog. Then to produce the O2 code.  There's need not have to have a translator from PB to O2. 

Also bring in listbox, listview controls would be nice to have.

[JRS]

I think Drake's future is with their web version and subscriptions. The PowerBASIC purchase was insurance until they can convert their customers to the web. If anyone has a better story, I'm willing to listen.



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[chrisc]

Oh Dreads !

[Charles Pegge]

The manual is not as intimidating as it looks at first glance. The 19meg PDF has a massive number of duplicated pages.

[Mike Lobanovsky]

There's yet another 23MB worth of PBCC6 PDF manual, Charles.

[Charles Pegge]

Yes, we seem to have the same problem. In the console compiler manual, there is a massive duplication of various topics like con and power time