raph, maelstrom: I've mixed feelings about the Joy implementation project. On the one hand, it isn't just a cleaner version of Forth/Postscript, since making it a `pure' functional language has big effects on the semantics: the language admits *two* interpetations, one as a stack based manipulation language, the other as a combinatory algebra (think of S,K,I combinators).

On the other hand I think the Joy folk don't mention well known antecedent work. The pages on language concepts don't mention Forth or Postscript, and they don't mention work on stack-based implementations of combinator languages (Curien's work on categorical combinators is important here: incidentally the CAM --categorical abstract machine-- was a forerunner of the current implementation of Ocaml, the language maelstrom mentioned). I find this bad scholarship, and I think a desire on the part of the authors to look more original than they are might lie behind it.

W3C and opensource: I find it scary that the larger open source community (OSC) doesn't find out about important consultations like the W3C patent until a few days before the deadline. It is pathetic and embarassing, it makes the OSC look like a bunch of kids and it will hurt. I hope we get better at this. BTW, for UK advogato members, did anyone respond to the government's consultation last year on patenting IP?