an open source future for Fly?

[KenWood 5]

The beauty of this forum (and our Fly! community) is we can always vary in our opinions, express them and - most of the time ( ;-) ) - rationally discuss them.The other great thing is, by these discussions, we - as a community - end up coming up with great ideas to further our desire. This is one such case. I do not disagree that, after several more years, the core technology won't be severely outdated. Part of that comes from those of us that want to keep up with the latest technology. I still have my Amiga 2000, running the 2.04 OS, since the games I enjoyed on that computer won't run with any of the higher OS versions, and any newer games (yes, those are still coming out!) won't run on the older OS. So I *think* I understand where you are coming from. But for the forseeable future (in my mind several years yet) the SDK Rich and his team ensured we'd have - will keep those lucky enough to be able to program - to do just that. I don't think the SDK surface has been much more than scratched for the moment, and I like to think that very creative people will find ways to overcome many issues we yet have. Look at what Padriac has done so far for the scenery issue, and think of what may yet come with a lot of talented folks we have.I certainly respect your viewpoint, and thank you for taking time to address mine. This is what makes our community flourish! Ken WoodEx-CNN International MeteorologistIN REMEMBERANCE OF THE CREW OF THE SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA - GODSPEED TO YOU ALL!

[Guest DSandberg]

> When they develop programming like this. Isnt there a sort of> lock or protection that is built into it. That keeps someone> from being able to actually change or modify the actual open> source base coding? > > I have C++ on my system and have tried to tinker around with> some of the files and I've run into this several times. When> trying to change a certain line of coding and upon saving. I> get access denied type of window. (I'm going to assume you are talking about MSVC++ rather than some other compiler, both because it's the most common one for Windows production, and because it's the only one I have any meaningful experience with.)No, there's no innate source code protection unless you are also running a source code management system like SourceSafe (and if you were doing so you'd probably be aware of it already). Most likely you are just running into files that are marked as read-only in the system for whatever reason. That file attribute is easy enough to change if you really want to (it's just a standard Windows file). (This is one of the reasons why companies are jealously protective of their source code ... because once people have gained access to it, they can pretty much do whatever they want with it.)However, whether changing a read-only attribute will have any practical effect depends upon what the code you are talking about is associated with. Specifically, if you are attempting to change any of the source code included with VC++ for either the C runtime libraries or MFC (code that was included to make debugging easier), doing so will not have an actual effect other than to potentially make it difficult or impossible to continue to use that file for debugging purposes. This is because the libraries for that source code are already compiled, and the included source is only present for debugging (or getting to know some of the innards of what happens inside the runtime libraries). As far as I know you cannot actually recompile the runtimes or MFC libraries using that included source code (as certain parts are omitted).If on the other hand you're attempting to alter code from another source (probably including any tutorial code included with VC++, or any open source program that you've downloaded), and by this I mean code that is actually being compiled into something, then you're probably just running into read-only files as mentioned above.[table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0][tr][td width=320]http://www.usinternet.com/users/mystic/infomsig.gif[/td][td width=170 align=center]Godspeed to the brave crew members of the space shuttle Columbia.[/td][/tr][/table]