brian yan

Hi all,

I'd like to offer everyone a very first release of RainbowEiffel.

RainbowEiffel aims to become an IDE for SmartEiffel compiler platform and to provide necessary
Eiffel libraries for commercial developments. Yet it is still in its infancy and currently supports
only a syntax-highlighted text editor and some Eiffel libraries. Over the time, it will evolve into
a decent Eiffel IDE including a code browser (both text and graphical), build tools and a debugger.
Currently it supports Win32 only and Linux support will be available in the future.

Following libraries are included in this release:
- The EiffelBase library, from Eiffel Software Inc. (formerly ISE), ported to SmartEiffel compiler
platform. Not all classes of the EiffelBase library are supported yet. See details in the release
notes.
- The wxEiffel GUI library from ELJ (Eiffel Liberty Journal) project. The library is based on
wxWindows C++ library and used in development of the RainbowEiffel text editor.

RainbowEiffel is an open-source project and hosted by SourceForge -- you can download it from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rainbow-eiffel/. RainbowEiffel is intended to be a community
effort to make Eiffel tools and libraries freely available to everyone who loves Eiffel.

Following mailing lists will be available within 24 hours from now.
rainbow-eiffel-developers@lists.sourceforge.net
rainbow-eiffel-users@lists.sourceforge.net

Best Regards,
Brian Yan

roger browne

You might want to look for somewhere other than SourceForge to host
your
EiffelBase adaptations, because the IFFEL license
http://docs.eiffel.com/general/licenses/iffel.html
that covers EiffelBase is quite restrictive and is not open source
according to the OSI definition used by SourceForge:
http://opensource.org/docs/definition.php

The IFFEL license prohibits distribution for which a fee is charged
(such as on a CD-ROM or from a subscription-only website), which
conflicts with clause 1 ("The license shall not restrict any party
from selling or giving away the software...").

There's also a problem with clause 3 ("The license must allow
modifications and derived works...") because the IFFEL license does not
permit modifications unless they are supported by "the latest
officially released version of ISE's implementation of the Eiffel
language" and in addition make use only of language features described
in the book "Eiffel The Language" plus changes or extensions approved
or accepted for discussion by NICE
http://www.eiffel-nice.org/

For example, it is not permitted to adapt EiffelBase to SmartEiffel 2.0
if problems with repeated inheritance are resolved by using the
"insert" keyword.

It's an unfortunate situation, because EiffelBase would have become
much more widely used if it was released under a less restrictive
license. (This also applies to Tower's release of the Eiffel Booch
Components - but that's another story.)

As an alternative, have you considered basing RainbowEiffel on the
portable Gobo libraries or on SmartEiffel's own libraries? Both of
these are true open source software. The Gobo package includes some
EiffelBase compatibility libraries which may ease the transition.
Regards,
Roger Browne

brian yan

Thanks for pointing these out.
As far as I understood the IFELL license, it prohibits charging a fee for distribution of EiffelBase
library per se. It allows charging a fee for distribution of some software, RainbowEiffel for
example, that includes EiffelBase. SourceForge is hosting RainbowEiffel, not EiffelBase per se. So
I hope it is something that SourceForge can allow but I do not know their answer -- I may need to ask them.


This one is harder. It seems that I have to stick with SmartEiffel 1.1 for now until we have
another SmartEiffel release, that is in line with ISE/NICE accepted standards, which may never come.
Or I may have to branch out SmartEiffel and maintain it by myself, which I do not intend to do now.


I concur with you.


RainbowEiffel was already based on Gobo and SmartEiffel's own library. I just want to add
EiffelBase to offer everyone some degree of application portability between ISE and SmartEiffel
compilers, and have been considering to use EiffelBase for further development of RainbowEiffel
because, in my opinion, it is more complete and better. I do not want to lose this possibility just
because of the licensing issue. Any more suggestions/comments? They will be very much welcome and
appreciated.

Regards,
Brian

jim cochrane

Once you're clear on what the issues are, you might try contacting ISE,
explain what you intend to do, and get permission to do it, or work out a
reasonable compromise, or some kind of arrangement that both you and they
are satisfied with. I'd say it's worth a try.

--
Jim Cochrane; jtc@dimensional.com
[When responding by email, include the term non-spam in the subject line to
get through my spam filter.]

roger

Apologies if my previous post seemed rather harsh - I've seen people
bitten by licensing issues after hundreds of hours of development
time.

Anyway, warm thanks for sharing your work with the Eiffel community.

Regards,
Roger

brian yan

No need for apologies. :-) Your points were valid and appreciated. I need to be more careful about
the licensing issues in the future. Please feel free to make any suggestions/comments in the
future.

Regards,
Brian