John Ousterhaut -- then on sabbatical at DEC's Western Research Center -- designed Tcl (Tool Command Language) as a clean, extensible scripting language for gluing together IC development tools. He posted the code online in 1987, in what is now known as open-source distribution. Word spread and downloads increased exponentially, to over 40K per month now. Tcl is used as an integration language -- including Unix, Windows, and Mac OS, for HTML, XML, legacy, and hardware applications -- much as SQL is used as a database language. Ousterhaut has now founded Scriptics, , to service the demand for commercial support and to coordinate the work of 50K developers. Scriptics has about 50 employees, and sales of $1M in 1998. Ousterhaut says that open-source support starts with books (to supplement inadequate documentation from contributing software developers), then training, software packages and support, development tools, extensions, and finally applications. [John C. Green, Jr., Software News, Jul99.] (A nice business model: build a developer/customer community before starting your company. It worked partly because DEC and then Sun had no interest in supporting and profiting from Tcl.)

dev-xml is a discussion list about XML and related technologies, including open-source projects. Other such lists from iDevResource.com cover other developer technologies. or . [, NEW-LIST, 23Nov99.]

lispweb is a discussion list for Lisp-based Web development, including the integration of Lisp or Scheme with HTML, Java, Javascript, and other systems. See or contact Craig Brozefsky at . [comp.lang.lisp, 16May00.]

littlelanguages is a discussion of "little languages," as in Randy M. Kaplan's book "Constructing Language Processors for Little Languages." . [, NEW-LIST, 02May00.]

"C/C++ Code of the Day" is a daily email message about new and popular C/C++ code at the Planet Source Code download site. . "Visual Basic Code of the Day" alerts you to VB resources, at . [, NEW-LIST, 15Nov99.]

SourceXchange is a place where open-source programmers can exchange code or seek corporate projects. . [Sara Winge , net-hap, 14May99.]

Sourcebank is a search engine for free source code and programming resources. . [BC , WebSiteDaily, 15Feb00. net-hap.]

IBM's Java virtual machine (JVM) for the Linux OS is compliant with version 1.18 of the Java Software Developer's Kit (JDK). It's free from IBM's DeveloperWorks Web site. [InfoWorld Electric, 18Oct99. Edupage.]

Developer.com supports Web programmers and IT professionals (with links to over 14K resources). See "Developer.com: The Journal" at . [, newjour, 26Feb99.]

MDJ, the Daily Journal for Serious Macintosh Users (and developers), is back in operation. Free limited trial from , then $30/month. [TidBITS, 24Jul00.]

cs-la is a news list for CS researchers and students in Latin America, chiefly in Portuguese and Spanish. Send a blank message to , or visit . [Jose Palazzo M. de Oliveira , dbworld, 09Apr00.]

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