[comp.lang.modula2] Whither Modula3

jjg@gzilla.Sun.COM (Jonathan Gibbons) (02/21/90)

What is going to happen to the public distribution of Modula3
that the Olivetti Research Center in Menlo Park was handling, 
now that Olivetti has closed it down and fired all but six of 
the staff?

-- Jon Gibbons
jjg@sun

reid@CTC.CONTEL.COM (Tom Reid x4505) (02/21/90)

>
>What is going to happen to the public distribution of Modula3
>that the Olivetti Research Center in Menlo Park was handling,
>now that Olivetti has closed it down and fired all but six of
>the staff?
>

I talked to David Roode, who is inheriting the Modula-3 and other projects
that were dropped, yesterday afternoon and he said that it should be
available after a period of transition while he figures out what is
going on.

Yesterday's mail also contained another license agreement to sign which
was sent out before the firing of everyone.  I managed to catch Alice Munz,
the admin assistant who wrote the letter, in her office and she said that
she thought it would be made in the public domain.  The new license
agreement was needed since most people sent in copies made off of the net
and the lawyers wanted ones that Olivetti themselves sent out so they
didn't have to read each one to see if someone had made a slight change ...
not a totally unreasonable request.

In any case, David said to send back in the license agreement and things
should be taken care of.

Why doesn't the first one to actually receive a copy broadcast to the net
so we know when the process starts working?

Tom.

Thomas F. Reid, Ph. D.                   (703)818-4505 (work)
Contel Technology Center                 (703)742-8720 (home)
15000 Conference Center Drive            Net: reid@ctc.contel.com
P.O. Box 10814
Chantilly, Va.  22021-3808

mjj@cl.cam.ac.uk (Mick Jordan) (02/21/90)

In article <132083@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> jjg@gzilla.Sun.COM (Jonathan Gibbons) writes:
>What is going to happen to the public distribution of Modula3
>that the Olivetti Research Center in Menlo Park was handling, 
>now that Olivetti has closed it down and fired all but six of 
>the staff?
>
>-- Jon Gibbons
>jjg@sun


We are hoping that Olivetti will agree to put the system in the public domain.

Mick Jordan

lins@Apple.COM (Chuck Lins) (02/24/90)

In article <1769@gannet.cl.cam.ac.uk> mjj@cam-orl.co.uk (Mick Jordan) writes:
>In article <132083@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> jjg@gzilla.Sun.COM (Jonathan Gibbons) writes:
>>What is going to happen to the public distribution of Modula3
>>that the Olivetti Research Center in Menlo Park was handling, 
>>now that Olivetti has closed it down and fired all but six of 
>>the staff?
>>
>>-- Jon Gibbons
>>jjg@sun
>
>
>We are hoping that Olivetti will agree to put the system in the public domain.
                                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Mick Jordan

I think that would be a very nice thing to do.

-- 
Chuck Lins               | "Exit left to funway."
Apple Computer, Inc.     | Internet: lins@apple.com
20525 Mariani Avenue     | AppleLink: LINS
Mail Stop 41-K           | 
Cupertino, CA 95014      | "Self-proclaimed Object Oberon Evangelist"
The intersection of Apple's ideas and my ideas yields the empty set.

moss@ibis.cs.umass.edu (Eliot Moss) (02/26/90)

I think the Olivetti folks will let us know if/when it happens, but they are
trying to get their Modula-3 compiler into the public domain or some other
distributable form. Meanwhile, you can get the DEC compiler (info available
from m3-request@src.dec.com), or you can wait for us to get the Gnu compiler
going (we have completed most items that do not require back end extensions
and expect a compiler to be available in about a year).		Eliot
--

		J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor
		Department of Computer and Information Science
		Lederle Graduate Research Center
		University of Massachusetts
		Amherst, MA  01003
		(413) 545-4206; Moss@cs.umass.edu

abrodnik@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Andrej Brodnik (Andy)) (03/07/90)

In article <MOSS.90Feb25145704@ibis.cs.umass.edu> Moss@cs.umass.edu writes:
>I think the Olivetti folks will let us know if/when it happens, but they are

I heard somewhere that the Olivetti group does not exist any more? :-)

Regards

Andrej
 

drc@cs.brown.edu (David R. Chase) (03/08/90)

abrodnik@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Andrej Brodnik (Andy)) writes:
>Moss@cs.umass.edu writes:
>>I think the Olivetti folks will let us know if/when it [release of
>Olivetti M-3 to public domain] happens, but they are
>
>I heard somewhere that the Olivetti group does not exist any more? :-)

Well, yes and no.  About 20 people were laid off, six remain.  Call it
what you want.  All the people associated with Modula-3 at Olivetti
were included in the lay-off, but we keep in touch with each other.
The DEC system is still available, and (when we're not hunting jobs
and frantically fulfilling prior commitments (writing papers,
reviewing papers, arranging to go or miss conferences)) at least one
ex-Olivetti person is willing to give (perhaps unwanted)
implementation advice.

There's also a possibility of redistribution by licensed sites -- I'm
not sure what the license says about that.  The FTP directory
<secret-directory-name> should contain all the work from CA (Mick and
Trevor were in England at the time) up to about 10 am, Feburary 15,
though it'll be a bit hard to decode what is in the hastily assembled
tar files (Marion was working on the Modula-3 interface to Mach
cthreads, I was about to test a new version of the backend, all of
this hosted on '386 machines running Mach).

David

mccalpin@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (John D Mccalpin) (03/08/90)

In article <MOSS.90Feb25145704@ibis.cs.umass.edu> Moss@cs.umass.edu writes:
>.... Meanwhile, you can get the DEC compiler (info available
>from m3-request@src.dec.com), or you can wait for us to get the Gnu compiler
>going (we have completed most items that do not require back end extensions
>and expect a compiler to be available in about a year).		Eliot
>		J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor

I got the SPARC version of the Modula-3 compiler off of gatekeeper.dec.com,
but have had a little bit of trouble compiling it.

Specific problems:
   (1) The sed commands in imake do not work.  They need to be modified
       to redirect the input file to stdin rather than just appending the
       name of the file to the command line.  Easy to fix.
   (2) In runtime/SPARC/stack.c, the symbol JB_SP is used but is not
       defined anywhere.  Nor is it defined anywhere in any of the
       files in /usr/include/*.  I can't figure out how to get past this one.
   (3) In the link step, I get several error messages about not being
       able to find alloc.o.  I have not yet bothered to fix this yet
       (which should be easy) because of problem #2.

Has anyone out there had better luck?
-- 
John D. McCalpin - mccalpin@vax1.acs.udel.edu
		   mccalpin@delocn.udel.edu
		   mccalpin@scri1.scri.fsu.edu

moss@ibis.cs.umass.edu (Eliot Moss) (03/10/90)

If you have problems with SRC Modula-3, I suggest you send mail to the
implementers at m3@src.enet.dec.com .....			Eliot
--

		J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor
		Department of Computer and Information Science
		Lederle Graduate Research Center
		University of Massachusetts
		Amherst, MA  01003
		(413) 545-4206; Moss@cs.umass.edu