Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.nethere.com!news.nethere.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 05 May 2015 14:16:01 -0500 From: "Nobody in particular" Newsgroups: comp.lang.basic.visual.misc References: <648ec488-2665-493d-89a6-4ede2d90dee7@googlegroups.com> <22egka9c3ocujk12fk9uetdq7afn328b24@4ax.com> Subject: Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 Date: Tue, 5 May 2015 12:15:37 -0700 Organization: little piles for the cat to knock over X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original Message-ID: Lines: 61 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-bo0GHM/qnrbqjkibTvcaJ+T5GGaq3oMn7U64hcUQdMDD4jrjxCvB4s9DWZ6XZ2ouPfPZUKpMRdwbS3B!unAWfn1fZOsdlYnp1Iq6DHwRaUZz2CpmbH9brf7+j+fnX4aMSFertHKlYhX6RohbKpzG62MS1XHf!2bI6lOJMxSHZ7XECH70= X-Complaints-To: abuse@nethere.com X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@nethere.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 4711 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.basic.visual.misc:2260 "ralph" wrote in message ... > On Mon, 4 May 2015 18:17:34 -0700, "Nobody in particular" > wrote: > >>"Michael Elliott" wrote in message ... >> >>> New crowd funded effort to update VB6 here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-replacement-to-visual-basic-6-ide-and-compiler >> >>A few of these have been started over the last 20 some odd years, but inevitably they hit some >>snag and decide to go in a different direction or simply decide to do something different and >>then tell everyone that they really ought to be rewriting their VB code from scratch anyway. >>A truly cross-platform 32/64 bit Visual Basic Classic would be really nice, but I'll believe >>it when I see it. Well, there's always Lazarus, the 32/64 bit cross-platform Delphi 4 clone. >> > > Thirteen years ago, I was part of a group, very well funded backed by > some major players, that attempted to license the VBIDE* core. We were > met with initial stalls until running into a solid brick wall. It was > more than MS had no interest in allowing "VB" to continue at that > time, the basic problem was the VBIDE is made-up of many proprietary > components - and not the least of them the "VB Runtime Engine". We > also were faced with an internal MS battle between Office and > Development - Office wanted ownership of "VB". Probably > over-simplified but my impression was Office would let nothing go and > Development had no desire to chance competing against their own > product. > > Since licensing was out we investigated re-writing essentially from > scratch - however, everything we came up with MS made it very clear > they would consider a "copy-right violation" and would take steps to > throttle it. Some of the objections were kind of thin - like "look & > feel", others more substantial in terms of specific code and > functional elements. How much they could have done, and whether we > might have won in the end didn't mattered - none of our backers wanted > to go there. > > While, I have no idea what other groups may have run into, I suspect > it has been pretty much the same. MS is a Goliath and frankly Davids > only win in the movies. > > Part of the frustration, for me, is MS has everything in place to > deliver a 32/64 bit VB with multiple enhancements practically > overnight, any time they would choose to do so. Most of the code has > already been prototyped. There were many features that were planned to > be introduced in VB6 - like ability to do implementation inheritance; > building true code libraries; .Net inter-operability; improved > collection libraries; visual modeling / code generation; etc. - but > all work was stopped and it was shoved out the door - MS having > already decided to go with .Net. > > [*VBIDE. I am using this term, because VB is far more than just a > language.] So M$ was simply flat out LYING that everyone's code simply had to be broken and rewritten completely from scratch in order to take advantage of their new Java rip-off platform or even work at all in some future Windows.NET. Big surprise there! I wonder if their legal beagles would bark quite so loudly now. Unfortunately for us all, they probably would.