VBscript vs Python (was Re: [5th Draft] Open Letter to CNRI: Request for clarification)

[Alex Martelli]

"phil" <dawks at tesco.net> wrote in message
news:39875c94.18192879 at news.tesco.net...
    [snip]
> i'm out of here and will solve the problem with VBScript (and it can

Take care!!!  Microsoft has announced, buried somewhere in the folds of
the many .NET things, that VBscript will shortly *DISAPPEAR*.  I'm sure
you can find all the how's and why's in the 'scripting' section of MSDN,
but,
basically, they want to add to Visual Basic (the for-$$$ product) what few
features VBscript (the free thingy) has extra today, and kill VBscript as a
separate entity.  JScript should also 'disappear' in a different sense --
the
new version, JScript.NET, will be a compiled language, part of Visual
Studio .NET, and so, again, most likely a for-$$$ thingy.  Just look at the
arm-and-a-leg that Microsoft charges for the ability to incorporate VBA in
your for-resale applications, and *shudder*...!  (Even for in-house apps,
it ain't exactly CHEAP...).

Of course, 'disappear' can't mean that Bill Gates in person is going to
go around all customers' sites and wipe away the hard-disk and backup
bits incorporating VBscript and/or JScript; those bits are going to stay
around for a long while, and I guess they'll more-or-less work in sites
where they already do.  But what happens to your ability to redistribute
Microsoft scripting languages for-free to your customers, as a part of
your own product, I just dunno.  If it's important to you, I STRONGLY
suggest you should have your lawyers look into this *ASAP*; maybe if
you act right now you can still secure a permanent free-redistribution
license, which might escape from your grasp in a few months.

Even if you get this license, the scripting-language you redistribute
will be forever frozen -- no bug-fixes, no upgrades, no cool-access to
whatever The Next Big Thing turns out to be, etc, etc.  If that's what
you want, then you could surely take Python 1.5.2, and redistribute
*THAT*.  But, actually, it seems to me that, despite the transient
anxiety, the Python licensing situation is *FAR* less threatening
than the Microsoft-Scripting-languages one.

> be solved that way, it was my other less interesting alternative).
>
> I don't run my business on Python and it seems clear that anybody
> would be a fool to do so.

And what about 'running your business' on a Microsoft scripting
language, with the far-larger attendant heartaches...?


Alex