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Comment Re:Affero GPL? (Score 1) 79

If you modify the compiler, you have to redistrbute the source indeed. Notice the compiler does not include the standard library and the backends (native/node)

The Opa compiler will remain an AGPL project. The standard library and the native backend will be licensed under the GPL license with the so-called ClassPath exception, like Java. The exception means you can link the GPL code with any code, opening the door to license your application under any license. The forthcoming Node.js backend will be licensed under the MIT license.

Submission + - Opa 1.0 Released (opalang.org)

phy_si_kal writes: The open source Opa project just released its 1.0 version. Opa appeared last year and was discussed a few times.

Throughout the year, Opa adopted a JavaScript-like syntax, gained support for MongoDB and now Node.js.
Opa positions itself as the enterprise JavaScript framework due to the safety and security provided by its strong static typing system.

Indeed, Opa checks the type safety of the application over the whole application, from client, to server, to database. Opa also provides many automation algorithms, such as the automated use of Node.js fibers at runtime, automated client/server and server/database dialog.

The site of the project also announces a developer challenge.

Science

Submission + - Physicists Discover Evolutionary Laws of Language 2

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Christopher Shea writes in the WSJ that physicists studying Google's massive collection of scanned books claim to have identified universal laws governing the birth, life course and death of words marking an advance in a new field dubbed "Culturomics": the application of data-crunching to subjects typically considered part of the humanities. Published in Science, their paper gives the best-yet estimate of the true number of words in English—a million, far more than any dictionary has recorded (the 2002 Webster's Third New International Dictionary has 348,000) with more than half of the language considered "dark matter" that has evaded standard dictionaries (PDF). The paper tracked word usage through time (each year, for instance, 1% of the world's English-speaking population switches from "sneaked" to "snuck") and found that English continues to grow at a rate of 8,500 new words a year. However the growth rate is slowing, partly because the language is already so rich, the "marginal utility" of new words is declining. Another discovery is that the death rates for words is rising, largely as a matter of homogenization as regional words disappear and spell-checking programs and vigilant copy editors choke off the chaotic variety of words much more quickly, in effect speeding up the natural selection of words. The authors also identified a universal "tipping point" in the life cycle of new words: Roughly 30 to 50 years after their birth, words either enter the long-term lexicon or tumble off a cliff into disuse and go "23 skidoo" as children either accept or reject their parents' coinages."
Programming

Submission + - New Opa S4 release puts forward new "ORM" for MongoDB (opalang.org)

phy_si_kal writes: The new, open source, Opa web programming language just hit version 0.9.0 "S4", six month after its last major release.
Apart from a new syntax more similar to JavaScript, the new releases focuses on mongoDB integration.
Opa now features something similar to ORM except that mongoDB is a non-relational, document-oriented database and Opa a functional, non-object-oriented language.
The new functionality makes the NoSQL database even easier to use as all language-database calls are automated. And the mapping of functional datastructures to documents could even be much better than current ORM approaches and solve the object-relational impedance mismatch.

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