[RESOLVED] Obtain Form Size in Millimeters

Quote:

Originally Posted by [B

Tanner_H[/B]]I really mean this, genuinely: please show me a successful "free software" project that works without open-source licenses. I have searched, and I don't know of any. I think open-source systems were invented for a reason. They have given us countless incredible pieces of software.

Can the "attribution doesn't matter" crowd say the same?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eduardo-

Why we need to be so closed minded.
Why not to think in something new?

What you post does not make any sense to me.

Here some facts:
- the overwhelming majority of VB6-devs has absolutely no clue about 'free software' and how their OS-licensing-model works
- a large part of that group (as e.g. yourself and Elroy) do not respect even basic attribution-rules (Elroy still being in violation, by trying to re-license BSD-Code-Parts under an GPL-V3 umbrella for example)
- and that "modus operandi" is basically the status quo for about 20 years now...
- in those 20 years no important larger code-piece was produced by the VB6-community (besides a few exceptions, which are licensed as 'free software')

To wrap it up in a shorter sentence:
The mindset of ("I want a free copy without contributing-to, or respecting anything" is the norm in the VB6-community for already a long time -
and it has produced next to nothing.

So taking your two questions from above ...
1) Why we need to be so closed minded?
Right, the closed-minded resistance with regards to learning more about the rules of 'free software'-projects needs to come to an end -
(before the VB6-community scares away the last remaining developers who have better knowledge and can still "move things").

2) Why not to think in something new?
Yep - oh wait, Tanner already posted a new idea, which apparently did work for other developer-communities,
who apparent have produced hundreds of useful libraries and development-tools over the last 20 years. ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eduardo-

The VB6 community may not be as other communities. It comes from closed source, and now is forced by the circunstances to find its way.

You are absolutely right, the VB6-community has to find its way (and soon)...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eduardo-

Trying to apply the rules that (to some point) worked for open source communities had no success so far, so let's try something else...

...and that sentence above does again not make any sense (is plain wrong).

We did not have "success so far" (assuming you mean a new compiler and IDE),
because most of us don't follow the spirit (and rules) of free-software development.

As amply demonstrated here - the mindset of the majority of the VB6-community seems to be a pure egocentric one:
"Me first" (community-spirit, or willingness to invest efforts into a community-project basically non-existent, ignorance about free software the norm).

And since we are at it - what's also important to mention with regards to free-software is,
that for the most part the free libaries are almost always platform-independent ones - and
knowledge about them (wrapping them) becomes a necessity, when we want to develop a
VB6-successor which runs anywhere (the Win-OS is in decline - and will die alongside VB6).

Thankfully a few Deveopers here do recognize that, and have started writing wrappers around those libs as e.g.:
- Tanner with his Compression-Wrappers
- wqweto with his Zip- and 7Zip- archive-wrappers (also being a contributor to the TinyCC-compiler-project, which you will hear about in the next months here in this theater)
- Dragokas with wrapping the PCRE-lib
- jpbro with wrapping the NGinx-WebServer-engine
- and myself having wrapped the SQLite and Cairo-libs (to provide an MS-free Form- and UserControl-engine for the new IDE)

So it's not only about free-software licenses - it's also about the whole "FreeSoftware-EcoSystem", which
we need to educate ourselves and stop "looking - or praying to MS" ... we will not get any help from there.

And now please think and consider what a platform-independent VB6-successor really means:
- not a single Win32-API Declare will work on non-Windows-OSes, with regards to libs which are candidates for a future Class-Runtime that e.g.
- Lavolpes GDI+ API-wrappers will not be available
- Fafalones Shell32-wrappers will not be available
- Krools CommonControl-wrappers will not be available

Whereas the further above mentioned VB6-wrappers around free-software-libs
will be easily portable in a platform-independent fashion.

Olaf