2005.09.16 20:03 "Re: [Tiff] What do you call...", by Joris Van Damme

Frank,

To be fair, Joris is an evil proprietary software zealot, looking to build a software empire on the basis of his in depth knowledge for TIFF format. He isn't technically a libtiff developer, nor for the most part even a C/C++ developer. (Delphi!)

I do appreciate your sense of humor, even if I think good humor is a dangerous thing when wasted in public, though I would like to remind you to not ever tell anyone I'm actually Bill Gates incognito.

Totally serious now, though, it's actually not yet so certain that I am a proprietary software zealot. Measuring the amount of code offered at http://www.awaresystems.be/, I actually seem more like an open software prophet, since the little AsTiffTagViewer is outweighted by the much larger Delphi build of LibTiff, all source naturally included.

I'm a sucker for Delphi, that is true for a fact. ObjectPascal is ObjectC in disguise, but the disguise is much more friendly typing and reading then the original and doesn't give me a dislectic headache. Apart from that, it's actually the same language. It's compiled by literally the same compiler! I recommend it to anyone, and ignore the fact that makes me look very ridiculous when most seem to think Delphi is some sort of VB-ish thingy.

As a vicious and opportunist sidenote, the software that maintains http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/tml.html is proprietary software written in Delphi by a single coder. Please compare the results to any mailman archive. Mailman is open software written in C and C++ by a team of geeks.

Frank Warmerdam wrote:

As a free software zealot, I don't mind if some sub-standards want to put such restrictions on the TIFF format.

I'm a fanatic open data format zealot (not kidding actually), I think data is the user's property, he owns it, it is not to be hijacked by any software vendor, and our future grandchildren need to be guaranteed access to our current data. I don't mind any sub-standard either. But let's at least think it over, and define it, in public. Let's make sure there's a Rosetta stone included. If 'the wankers wouldn't let [Antoine] publish any of the tiff part of the standard', then no tiff part of the standard exists as far as I'm concerned.

That's not puritanism, it's pragmatic. It drives http://www.awaresystems.be/ even more then proprietary Delphi code does, and guess what, none of the free software zealots has build such a TIFF sections sofar.

I'm spinning way of topic though... I hope you understand I couldn't help myself - I just had to - this stuff matters. But I'll try to shut up now.

Joris Van Damme
info@awaresystems.be
http://www.awaresystems.be/
Download your free TIFF tag viewer for windows here:
http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/astifftagviewer.html