I am not {only} programming this software, I am this software's director. I relate to Ted Nelson because like him I am primarily an artist/filmmaker who got into software because I see how it can improve the way we make art and connect using computers; I recognize that the 'code monkeys' may have knowledge on how to program (within narrow, top-down hierarchical paradigms), they're missing what to program!
I am primarily motivated by a desire to get this into people's hands, to allow a generation that has been robbed of this tooling to connect and create in new ways, to show the world that there is nothing about what TN has proposed that is somehow impossible / inherently vapor, that even I could do it! (I was in special ed, and dropped out of college, what's your excuse?)Another key political motivator is in data monetization. I believe, following what has been outlined in the works of Jaron Lanier, that by simply rewarding people for the valuable data that users add to a network, instead of harvesting that data for free and then selling it back to us in the form of ads; this is enough to create a middle class again.
Zipstyke started because there seemed to me to be no extant, accessible, current, maintained implementations that:
- follow Ted Nelson's design plans exactly
- actually 'save'
So as a point of departure I started is on the image-based persistence front, in a module that I call "waffle". This is an essential part of the design plan that has been overlooked in every implementation to-date.
Most of my program is written in C, which activates bash scripts for i/o [this architectural design principle is borrowed from objective smalltalk], but the waffle element uses scheme, currently s7, because I wanted to create an elegant solution. In pursuing this avenue, I have managed to get a rudamentary "Cowcatcher" going, that is: a forth-like stack-based programming language based in cells.
Zipstyke is designed as a visual-first experience, similar to HyperLook it is a departure from WYSIWYG.
I have recieved some general funding which will go towards developing a 1.0 release. Early access and technical support will be granted to those who make a purchase, and after 3 or 4 sales, I will release the source code for free to the public.
My tentative roadmap for 2025 is as follows:
- finish documentation, my workflow has been to write the man pages first and simply extrapolate the program from there
- finish the cli tools [cell, struct, database, virtual-interactive machine, image persistence, cell based stack programming language]
- finalize/decide on the (rendering) backend [currently going forward with notcurses & experimenting with cairo+xcb+openGL]
- add multimedia support
- make sure the system is secure in memory & on disc
That is probably realisticly all I have time for this year (without any funding). Then its important to add...
- add networked p2p multi-user realtime collaborative support [on the GNUNet] -> realworld usecase of adding a drop-in replacement for the datastore backend which currently allows for flavors of SQL
- add monetization through GNU Taler and/or additional methods
I don't want to release the source code to the public before monetization with microtransactions are added. Every time Xanadu(R) is brought up on Orange Site, there's a litany of complaints about DRM. People will try to remove the integral parts and it'll just add to the 'ripoff everyone no matter the cost, gimme everything for free' mentality that has ruined the promise of the internet since the 90's.
Please keep in mind that the source code is remaining privately closed until at least the above list has reached stability. The works by previous authors I browsed for reference are already available as FOSS for you to study just as I did, and are not AGPL so afaik I am not obliged to release the source code. The license itself uses the connective tissue of hyperthogonality in order to display information in a way that has never been done before, its not a static sheet of paper but a living document. There are conflicts between copyleft and transcopyright licensing. Until I can afford a lawyer, then I can afford a lawyer, but currently I can't afford a lawyer, so licensing that intends to protect / interacts with law courts do nothing to benefit me since I cannot access law courts due to the poverty I face and the limitless funds & access to law courts of potential bad actors.