Marije;
>
> or what's the appropriate Chuck-slang for fork'ing?
>
>
spork~ myFunction();
Some notes; it's not just slang. Shreds really are different enough from
threads to warrant a different name. "spork" starts a new process (like
forking) but it's a child process of the one starting it and shares the
namespace of the context that started it (though the reverse doesn't hold
true). We like our cute words, but it's not like we just use them because
they are cute. Threads are cool because they (can) run at the same time,
shreds on the other hand run in parallel but behind the scenes they run in
turn in a very deterministic way so that's almost like a opposite from that
perspective. If you pretend they are the same and keep reasoning from that
perspective then there will be issues. You're just jealous you guys don't
have have funny words :-p.
Anyway, ChucK could be forked and there have been initiatives in that
direction for the purpose of developing and testing new UGens (most notably
by Stephen Sinclair). I have the source right here, it's licensed under the
GPL2. I can and have redistributed it, I can read it, edit it, contribute
changes, have in the past and assume I'll be able to keep doing that. Just
because (ports of) parts of ChucK were sold as a closed program on
proprietary hardware and haven't -so far- been opened doesn't mean I lose
any of those rights. I just looked up Ge's post on this subject, dated about
a year ago (late Dec 2008), that anticipates this debate;
[Ge]
** One common question concerns ChucK on the iPhone. Here is where things
stand: ChucK has ported to the iPhone by**Smule**, and has served as the
audio platform behind its products (Sonic Lights, Ocarina, etc.). While
ChucK is freely available on OS X, Linux, and Windows (and shall remain so),
we have not yet opened ChiP, our ChucK on iPhone engine/port (nor do we
license this platform currently). While we can't make any promises, we
articulate that the core team would like to explores ways to open ChiP by
creating an beneficial environment for everyone (researchers, artists,**
smule**, developers). Again, we can't make any promises and it is a
possibility that ChiP will not be open sourced for the foreseeable future,
but we genuinely want to make it open and make it work, and are exploring
that possibility.
* Along this line, we would like to articulate the following point: major
general language features that are introduced as part of ChiP *will* be
fully released in the main distribution (only iPhone/**smule**-specific
features will remain proprietary for now). This is by design when we
structured **Smule**. You see, most of us at **Smule** care about, use, and
release open-source software, and we genuinely want to build an ecosystem
where things can be as open as possible and remain mutually beneficial. We
shall keep moving forward in this way.*
[/Ge]
It's been snowing a lot so I can see where the feeling comes from but as far
as I can tell the sky is in fact not falling at all. In other news; Ge is
still doing too many things at the same time, ChucK can still crash
sample-accurately, there is still no clear documentation on what is and
isn't documented (I wish there was as that would be a great help in updating
the manual), garbage collection is still planned "real soon now" and
SuperCollider-users still eat babies. Fluxus on the other hand is ok, just a
few days ago I discovered that if I need to keep track of what is where in
my world I can use the "map" function, this is quite possibly the most sane
thing I have ever seen in any language.
Yours,
Kas.
Received on Fri Jan 22 2010 - 13:27:04 GMT