John D. Mitchell's Blog

SubEthaEdit turns 2.0: Is that a good thing?

For the most part, SubEthaEdit is just a tidy little editor that runs only on Mac OS X. However, it's claim to fame is the fact that it supports concurrent editing of documents by multiple people. SubEthaEdit is a fascinating tool for collaborative editing things like conference notes or, heaven forbid, source code (i.e., pair programming where you don't have to strain your neck peering over each other's shoulders :-).

In the v1.0 days, the license was basically donation-ware and there was a clear statement in the FAQ that talked about them cleaning up the code to release it as "open source". Alas, in this v2.0 release, the license has gotten more pointedly commercial (with a non-commercial/demo/trial exclusion) and all mention of any open-source take has disappeared. Now, it's their code and they can do what they want with it but I must confess that I feel misled.

To add insult to injury, v2.0 has switched to a completely different protocol (based on BEEP, blech) and there's no interoperability between v1.0 and v2.0. What are they thinking?

Comments

• SubEthaEdit turns 2.0: Is that a good thing?
  I think the idea and SubEthaEdit is good, don't thinking about the license. But I'm interested about a implementation for jedit or others that I can also use it on other platform.

  Posted by: lordy on May 19, 2004 at 12:15 PM

• SubEthaEdit turns 2.0: Is that a good thing?
  Yeah, I think it would be great to create a generally useful protocol and implementations for various languages so they could be incorporated into various editors.

  I've seen bits of discussion about this floating around the 'net but I don't see anybody really pushing on it.
  

  Posted by: johnm on May 19, 2004 at 01:19 PM

• BEEP
  I'm just wondering... What's so bad about BEEP?

  Posted by: flynn on May 20, 2004 at 02:31 AM

• BEEP
  Bad specs, too complicated, etc.

  Posted by: johnm on May 20, 2004 at 02:10 PM

• BEEP
  Sound like a very founded opinion you are having there...

  Posted by: flynn on May 21, 2004 at 01:20 AM

• BEEP
  Hmm... I'm unclear on how to interpret your comment. Can you please clarify?

  Posted by: johnm on May 21, 2004 at 09:40 AM

• SubEthaEdit turns 2.0: Is that a good thing?
  I think a new protokoll, implementations for various languages maybe a to big step for to less developer. Think about a BEEP implementations for a JEdit is a better start, but don't know how bad BEEP is.

  Posted by: lordy on May 21, 2004 at 01:33 PM

• BEEP
  My point was that you did not explain why in your opinion BEEP sucks. Replying "Bad specs" to "What's bad?" hardly qualifies as reasonable arguing.
  

  Posted by: flynn on May 21, 2004 at 03:37 PM

• BEEP
  Thanks for clarifying.

  Sorry, I wasn't making an argument but stating a fact. I actually had hopes for BEEP when it was starting out and then a colleague and I worked on/with it. BEEP suffers from an all too common failing, over-complexification. That is quite clearly manifested throughout the various facets including the specifications, the design itself, etc. including insidiously punting on some types of problems.
  

  Posted by: johnm on May 22, 2004 at 09:06 AM

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