An Anonymous Coward asks: "I'm a highly competent and occasionally respected software engineer, who has worked on several Open Source/Free Software projects; some of my code is in the Linux kernel. Within the OSS community, we maintain that the main point of publicly announcing OSS projects is to invite programmers to join the project and collaborate to make better software. But in about 90% of cases, I've found that publicly announced projects in development are not actually open to new members - the project leaders will ignore unsolicited code, won't respond to emailed queries or suggestions, and in many cases the projects in question remain in an early stage of development forever." What projects do you know of that don't make an issue out of incorporating user submitted patches and design changes, and what projects put forth huge restrictions on such submissions, even to the point of not accepting them at all?

DrInequality writes: "For those of you out there who admire the portability of Java but want something faster or open source, the answer to your prayers is finally here. The Internet Virtual Machine is open source, fast and supports C, C++, Java and ObjectiveC. There are some cool demos for Linux (requires Redhat 6.0 or above, and OpenGL 1.2 or Mesa 3.41) here (1.5MB) and for Windows (requires glut32.dll, here) here (1.5MB)." We mentioned this last year; perhaps it has improved. I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in a language as portable as Java but speedier.

A little while ago you asked Forth (and now colorForth) originator Chuck Moore about his languages, the multi-core chips he's been designing, and the future of computer languages -- now he's gotten back with answers well worth reading, from how to allocate computing resources on chips and in programs, to what sort of (color) vision it takes to program effectively. Thanks, Chuck!

Philippe Fremy writes: "I have written a small article to demonstrate how much KPart, the KDE component technology, is easy to use." Interesting to note how few lines of code certain things take -- just 600 lines for the koshell? Wow.

The indefatigable chromatic wrote this review of what sounds like another solid offering from the hard workers at O'Reilly & Associates. If you're in the market for dead-tree references to XML, it probably belongs on your list of candidates.

MadCow42 queries: "I'm in the process of putting together a 'Developer's Kit' for 3rd-party developers to use while writing front-end applications that hook into our software (our software runs a digital printing system). I've included a complete XML command language specification for our system, sample XML input and output, and simulation software they can use during development. What else would a developer want? From your experience, what makes a truly 'great' development support package? What can I do to make developer's lives easier?"

Wim Borgers asks: "In our company we're trying to get rid of an old Sun machine before it lease expires and has to be replaced by another one (very soon). Since they are very expensive, we would like to use a Linux box instead. After weeks of trying to convert the Pascal programs, we finally reached a point where we think that it is impossible to migrate the machine: apparently the dialect of Sun Pascal is very specific and cannot be recompiled in Linux without complete rewriting the code... (and we lack the time to make such an undertaking). I think we better save those resources to convert to more decent working programs in the middle to long term. Does anyone have an idea how to get it these things run anyway?"

JgiSaw writes "GNUstep provides an Object-Oriented application development framework and tool set for use on a wide variety of computer platforms. It is based on the original OpenStep specification provided by NeXT, Inc. (now owned by Apple and endorced into MacOSX). OSNews is hosting an interview with Adam Fedor, of the GNUstep project, where Adam mentions among others that GnuStep has support for the MacOSX API too, which will make porting MacOSX applications to Linux much easier."

rasjani asks: "I recently started working as sysadmin. First major thing i want to rearrange is page distribution. Currently we are using rsync over ssh to copy the stuff to production servers and no backlog of any kind. I would like to implement CVS (or the like) into this scheme, so that if the NOC notices that something is broken in the web, they can do a rollback from CVS if the webmasters or editors aren't around to fix the problem. So people, do you have any thoughts how to implement this? Has anyone done something similar and willing to share their experiences? What gotchas might I stumble upon? Should I still use rsync/ssh for file distribution and add the check-in for a few scripts or should I just make a cron job in production servers to poll CVS for updated material?"

blackcoot asks: "I'm currently suffering through an undergraduate class in AI where it appears that the first commandment of implementation is 'Thou shalt use Lisp of suffer the wrath of the TA'. I've been hacking away at Lisp for the past week now, and I've come to two conclusions: I hate Lisp; and Perl seems to have all the closure features that made Lisp so good in the past for AI [i.e. judicious use of eval(...) and a little creativity can replace Lisp's (lambda ...) ]. I'm looking to learn as much as possible from this class and hopefully not die implementing the projects in the process, so I'm hoping some of you out there can either point me in the direction of a decent Lisp manual or help me formulate arguments in favor of letting students use Perl as the implementation language." I can surely emphasize with blackcoot's troubles with Lisp, but can Perl emulate the features of Lisp that make Lisp good for AI? Might Perl have some advantages over Lisp when it comes to writing AI code?

Long-suffering Slashdot reader WrinkledShirt contributes this review of John Hall's Programming Linux Games, and lays out the good and the bad in a book that's one of the few of its kind. More games are always good -- hopefully books like this one will spark some inspiration.

Thanks to Pudge of Slashteam for pointing out that very early version of Parrot has been released. You may recall Parrot from The April Fool's joke - but it's coming to life.

Eugenia writes: "Trumpet Software is mostly known for their Internet communications software package, Trumpet Winsock, which has been adopted by the Internet world back in 1995, at the times where Windows 3.1 and Win95 did not come as standard with full internet connetion capabilities. But the main product these days for Trumpet Software is PetrOS, a 32-bit Operating System, which has the goal to be compatible by all means (binary and API compatible) with Microsoft Windows. OSNews is interviewing the main architect behind the project, Peter Tattam, who talks in depth about PetrOS, and also there is shown an early screenshot of the PetrOS GUI, which is still under heavy development." And it's been (not surprizingly) under heavy development for a while. Building a Windows-compatible OS from scratch surely isn't easy, but from this interview (including screenshots) they're having quite a go of it.

npoole asks: "Like many of the Slashdot readers, I am a programmer and have been pushing out repetitive database content for about a year. The work simply doesn't stop and the more we get it seems the less we ensure quality work. I have been debating telling my boss that either we take less clients, less money, more quality work or I am leaving. Is this a smart thing to do? I'm making very good money doing quick hacks to push out websites, but it's not very project oriented as much as it's become 'throw in pre-written, pre-used functions'. Any advice on how to ensure quality in our work without telling my boss it's either my way or the highway?" Of course, improved quality in any product affects the bottom line, and it's the bottom line that managers are paid to keep up. How can a developer communicate to managers (both open and closed) the value of better quality in development, and how long should one try before giving up?

Joe writes: "Someone introduced me to a new game called Robocode and now I'm hooked as well as my 17 year old son. We are both learning Java while playing the game or I should say while building our Java robots. The game is setup to teach you how to handle events, how to create inner classes, and other Java techniques to build more sophisticated Java bots. I have a c++ background so I've been helping my son with his bots, but he's catching on very fast. It's turning out to be a cool and easy way to get the kid clued into programming and best of all its free." I'll bet if the little Logo turtles shot at each other, I would have had more fun programming as a kid.

Arandir asks: "Backwards compatibility is great for users. But it sucks for developers. After a while your normally sensible and readable code becomes a nightmare spaghetti tangle of conditions, macros and multiple reinventions of the wheel. Eventually you have to kiss off backwards compatibility as more trouble than it's worth. The question is, when? Should my code conform to POSIX.1 or Single UNIX 2? Should I expect the user to have a ISO Standard C++ compiler? What about those users with SunOS-4.1.4, Slackware-3.2, and FreeBSD-2.2?" This question is really kind of difficult to answer in the general sense. The best advice one can give, of course, is "when you can get away with it". Not much help, that, but the lost of backwards compatibility, like most complex decisions, depends on a lot of factors. The key factor in most developers eyes, of course, is the bottom line. Have many of you been faced with this decision? What logic did you use to come to your decision and what suggestions do you have for others who might find themself in this predicament?

JohnG inputs: "I just got into quite a long argument over on the Yahoo! message boards over the power of command line dev tools. Basically the guy told me that it is impossible to create 'state of the art' programs with command-line tools. But when I asked him to give me reasons why he just called me stupid and 'behind the times'. Considering he was an avid supporter of anything Microsoft, I take what he says with a grain of salt. But what I want to know is how many of you developers have switched from command line work to KDevelop or CodeWarrior? And what advantages you think it offers? Certainly there are many 'state of the art' apps created with command line tools, but I'm open to anything that can increase productivity. I've just never seen a compelling reason to make the switch from what I am used to and comfortable with." Personally, I feel the best development environment to work in would be one that ignores neither the GUI, or the command line.

Joseph Dale writes "Lisp as an Alternative to Java is a detailed and well-reasoned study comparing Lisp to Java and C++ in terms of execution time, memory consumption, and developer effort. The author, Erann Gat, was the principal software architect for the Mars Science Microrover, the prototype for the Mars Pathfinder rover."

LiquidPC writes "Running a cvsupd server isn't an easy task, but ONLamp.com has some help to make it simpler. In the article, Michael Lucas continues his series on CVSup."

Not long ago you asked Kurt Skauen about his AtheOS, a GPL'd OS with an integrated GUI and notable commonalities and differences from certain other GPL'd OSes. Kurt responded at length on everything from choice of programming languages to whether you'll see a version of AtheOS soon for the PPC. He also talks about dealing with interoperability (with Windows and with *NIX), why he chose the GPL, and what might drive him to change the AtheOS licensing.