[PythonCE] final closure

[Jeff Bauer]

Hi all.

I'm haven't been involved in the CE scene for a while
and it's probably time for me to bring some closure
to the situation.

Some background:  I first started getting involved with
handheld computers during the halycon days of the Apple
Newton.  In fact I showed up at the second Python Conference
(has it been that long ago?) with a Newton demonstrating
one of our applications.

The Newton was, to borrow a cliche, an "insanely great
device" -- media coverage of the handwriting recognition
notwithstanding.  It had a really cool Smalltalkish
language (Self), with decent support for GUI, persistent
storage, and even communications.  Then Steve Jobs killed
it.  :-(

I had investigated the Palm Pilot, but the Pilot simply didn't
possess the kind of resources we needed.

The next obvious choice was the Windows CE devices.  Interestingly,
Brian Lloyd (Digital Creations, now Zope) had actually *ported*
a version of Python (1.4 or 1.5) to the CE device. Considering
that he had one of the earliest devices in use and almost no prior
programming experience (he was hired by DC as an HTML guy!), his
port was pretty neat-o.  We shipped Brian a Sharp Mobilon to
encourage his work, then send one to Mark Hammond in Australia.
Unfortunately, it turned out that Mark had to pay customs on the
device.  Oops!

Anyway, for a while it appeared that we (Rubicon) might actually
fund some development for porting a decent GUI environment to
CE.  This idea turned out to be short-lived, however, as
circumstances prevailed.  Fortunately Brad and other have since
picked up development, subject to their respective schedules.

A couple years ago I was contacted by a Microsoft representative.
He appeared to be keen on promoting Python as a development
tool in the CE environment.  Once he learned that Python was
"Open Source" I never heard from him again.

If you've gotten this far in my rambling narrative, I'd
like to bring my relationship with Python/CE to a close.
I have some old gadgets left over.  Starting with the
primary Python CE contributors (Brad, et al), I'd like
to offer the following:

- Sharp Mobilon handheld HC-4600
- Casio E-105
- Socket Communications low power PCMCIA card (missing cable)

I don't know if any Python CE developer will find these
things useful or not (possibly to maintain backwards
compatibility), but they're available for the cost of
shipping.  Please contact me via email if interested.

Finally, I'd like to step down as administrator of the pythonce
mailing list.  The list is hosted by python.org.  The software
is Barry Warsaw's MailMan and is incredibly trivial to administer.
If you aren't a CE developer and would like to contribute some
minimal effort, this would be a good way to get involved.

Thanks to everyone for the past few years of fun!

Jeff Bauer
Rubicon Research