Annotation of papers/freem_history/freem_history.ms, revision 1.11
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1.11 ! snw 2: \" $Id: freem_history.ms,v 1.10 2025/04/23 18:44:26 snw Exp $
1.2 snw 3: \" History of FreeM
4: \"
5: \" Copyright (C) 2025 Serena Willis
6: \"
1.3 snw 7: \" $Log: freem_history.ms,v $
1.11 ! snw 8: \" Revision 1.10 2025/04/23 18:44:26 snw
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1.5 snw 26: \" Revision 1.4 2025/04/22 18:16:06 snw
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30: \" Initial draft of FreeM History paper
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36: .R1
37: database ../references.bib
38: move-punctuation
39: .R2
1.1 snw 40: .TL
41: The History of FreeM
42: .AU
43: Serena Willis
44: .AI
45: Coherent Logic Development
46: .AB
1.10 snw 47: Since 2014, the author has been the maintainer of the primary fork of the FreeM implementation of the M programming language and persistent global storage engine. In this paper, we will share some of the history of FreeM, as well as its current status and goals.
1.1 snw 48: .AE
49: .SH
50: Initial Involvement
51: .PP
1.9 snw 52: The author's mentor in computer programming and UNIX was Lawrence Landis, who got involved heavily in the M/MUMPS programming language ca. 1991. Mr. Landis promoted the M language to the author from 1991 forward, and first demonstrated FreeM to her in August 1998. In 2010, the author incorporated her company, Coherent Logic Development, learned M, and began doing contract work in M through Mr. Landis's company, Fourth Watch Software.
1.1 snw 53: .PP
1.3 snw 54: Mr. Landis was the owner of FreeM's SourceForge repository
55: .[
56: gumpSF
57: .]
58: , which had not been touched in a number of years, following Fidelity National Information Services' decision to release GT.M under a free software license. In August 2011, the author downloaded the source code for FreeM and did enough work on it to enable building and running under modern GNU/Linux systems and posted it to the mumpster.org forums.
59: .[
60: freem014
61: .]
1.1 snw 62: .PP
63: In 2014, Mr. Landis gave the author administrator access to the FreeM SourceForge repository and transferred maintainership of the project to her.
1.3 snw 64: .[
65: gumpSF
66: .]
1.1 snw 67: .SH
68: Early History
69: .PP
1.3 snw 70: FreeM was developed in Germany in the mid-1990s by a developer who went by the pseudonym \fIShalom ha-Ashkenaz\fR, whose actual identity remains unknown,
71: .[
1.9 snw 72: walters99
73: %P 19
1.3 snw 74: .]
1.11 ! snw 75: though it is thought by some that they are a dentist who learned C and developed FreeM on their own time. Shalom developed FreeM at a time when InterSystems Corporation (the company that developed the ISM implementation of M) was acquiring the majority of its competitors and shutting them down.
1.3 snw 76: .[
1.9 snw 77: ibid
78: %P 18
1.3 snw 79: .]
80: . Shalom wished to provide a community-driven, open-source implementation of M as a bulwark against the growing threat of single-vendor hegemony over the M language. Its design\(emas well as some of the documentation included with the original sources\(emindicate that FreeM was originally targeted to the MS-DOS family of operating systems. It made use of a very limited subset of the C library, and included instructions for renaming the MS-DOS style 8.3 filenames in order to compile under UNIX.
81: .[
82: freemREADME
83: .]
1.5 snw 84: .KS
1.3 snw 85: .PP
86: At one point in FreeM's early history, Shalom ported FreeM from MS-DOS to SCO UNIX, the UNIX System V Release III-derived descendant of Microsoft XENIX, now known as SCO OpenServer\(ema platform still supported by FreeM today.
87: .[
88: portSCO
89: .]
90: This port brought support for the \fIscoansi\fR terminal type, including colors and ANSI X3.64 control mnemonics.
1.5 snw 91: .KE
1.1 snw 92: .SH
1.11 ! snw 93: Generic Universal M Project
1.1 snw 94: .PP
1.5 snw 95: The \fIGeneric Universal M Project\fR was conceived by Richard F. Walters, a professor from U.C. Davis. The GUMP, following the rising popularity of object-oriented programming in the 1990s, was intended to be a toolkit allowing M implementations to be built from discrete components with a well-defined and well-specified public interface among these components. These components included the global handler (supplying the functionality of persistent global storage), and the interpreter/compiler (responsible for implementing M language commands). The components would have been able to communicate over a network, or in-process on the same host, enabling distributed computing functionality.
1.3 snw 96: .[
97: c2m
98: .]
99: .PP
100: Although the specification for the GUM interface to global handlers attained a reasonably well-specified level of completeness,
101: .[
102: gumapi
103: .]
1.9 snw 104: and Lawrence Landis and others developed a mostly-complete implementation of a GUM global handler,
1.3 snw 105: .[
106: gumpsrc
107: .]
108: none of the other envisioned components were ever completed, and specifically, the interpreter component was missing.
1.1 snw 109: .SH
110: Shalom's Gift
111: .PP
1.5 snw 112: In July of 1998, Shalom ha-Ashkenaz donated the FreeM source code (then known as FreeMUMPS) to the M User's Group-Deutschland (MUG-D), hoping the community would take the nascent implementation from its infancy through to a state of production-ready completeness and robustness. Shalom also placed a few conditions on his gift: a public release could not be made until a substantial set of milestones were reached. Per his conditions, the FreeMUMPS project must:
1.3 snw 113: .[
114: freemREADME
115: .]
1.1 snw 116: .IP \(bu 2
117: Implement the entirety of \fIANSI X11.1-1995\fR
118: .IP \(bu 2
119: Use Structured System Variables instead of \fIVIEW\fR commands and \fI$VIEW\fR functions
120: .IP \(bu 2
121: Raise the string size limits
122: .IP \(bu 2
123: Implement MWAPI, OMI, X11 bindings, and GKS bindings
124: .IP \(bu 2
125: Be substantially free of major bugs
126: .PP
127: Although MUG-D readily accepted the contribution of FreeMUMPS, the organization itself lacked the manpower and expertise to complete the implementation. Just as it is now, the intersection of M community members who know enough of the M language and C language to work on a project this ambitious was quite small.
1.11 ! snw 128: .SH
1.7 snw 129: .KS
1.1 snw 130: Merging GUMP and FreeM
131: .PP
1.5 snw 132: Very shortly after the contribution of FreeMUMPS to MUG-D, Richard F. Walters and a small team of developers and administrative staff who had been working on the GUMP assumed maintainership of the FreeMUMPS source code, with Lawrence Landis managing the development efforts.
1.3 snw 133: .[
1.9 snw 134: shortWalters99
135: %P 19
1.3 snw 136: .]
137: This included representatives from the \fIM Technology Association\fR (an M vendor association having several foreign branches), the \fIM Development Committee\fR (the M standards organization hosting the ANSI/ISO standards for the M language, then sponsored by the M Technology Association), and others.
138: .[
139: freemContributors
140: .]
141: The goals of this team were to:
1.1 snw 142: .IP \(bu 2
143: Meet Shalom's requirements for a public release of FreeMUMPS
144: .IP \(bu 2
145: Convert FreeMUMPS into the first interpreter component of the GUMP
1.11 ! snw 146: .KE
1.1 snw 147: .PP
1.5 snw 148: During this period, Ronald L. Fox of Diagnostic Laboratory Services in Honolulu, HI (who passed in 2010)
1.3 snw 149: .[
150: ronFoxGrave
151: .]
152: ported FreeMUMPS from SCO UNIX to Red Hat 5 and glibc-6.
153: .[
154: ronFoxPort
155: .]
156: Steve "Saintly" Zeck of the U.C. Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital
157: .[
158: saintlyBio
159: .]
160: also attempted to rewrite the symbol table code to lift string size limits,
161: .[
162: saintlySymtab
163: .]
1.8 snw 164: David Whitten enhanced some of the implementation-specific extensions, and Lawrence Landis integrated Zeck's symbol table work.
1.3 snw 165: .PP
1.5 snw 166: In FreeM 0.1.0, the name of the implementation was changed from FreeMUMPS to Public Standard M, and again to Free Standard MUMPS and then FreeM when it was discovered leading up to the FreeM 0.2.0 release that the PSM acronym was already in use for Patterson & Gray's
1.3 snw 167: .[
168: mdc_implementations
169: .]
170: M implementation.
171: .[
172: Changes.GUM
173: .]
174: Dr. Walters also received the implementation ID of 49 from then secretary of the M Development Committee, Don Piccone.
175: .[
1.9 snw 176: ibid
1.3 snw 177: .]
1.1 snw 178: .PP
1.5 snw 179: One of the contributors to FreeM at this stage\(emprimarily in the area of M vendor routines\(emwas Axel Trocha, who would later maintain a private fork of FreeM.
1.3 snw 180: .[
181: trochaFork
182: .]
1.7 snw 183: .KS
1.1 snw 184: .SH
185: The GT.M Free Software Release
186: .PP
187: GT.M, an acronym for \fIGreystone Technology MUMPS\fR, is an M implementation that was released by Greystone Technology in 1986. Greystone was later acquired by Sanchez Computer Associates, which was in turn acquired by Fidelity National Information Services.
1.3 snw 188: .[
189: fisSanchezAcquisition
190: .]
191: .PP
192: When GT.M was released under the GNU General Public License in 2000,
193: .[
194: gtmRelease
195: .]
1.5 snw 196: it seemed to many to negate the entire \fIraison d'etre\fR for FreeM, as GT.M was a well-established, robust, and high-performance M implementation with which FreeM could not then compete. Unfortunately, at this time, the GUMP and FreeM projects lost all of their momentum, and new development along these lines rapidly ceased. The final GUMP team release of FreeM was 0.5.0.
1.3 snw 197: .[
198: freem050
199: .]
200: However, Axel Trocha's private port would continue to be developed for some years.
1.7 snw 201: .KE
1.1 snw 202: .SH
203: Axel Trocha's Fork
204: .PP
1.11 ! snw 205: When the free software release of GT.M stalled the GUMP team's progress on the primary branch of development, Axel Trocha, an aforementioned contributor, continued development on the FreeM source code. Trocha added many interesting features to the FreeM codebase, including:
1.1 snw 206: .IP \(bu 2
207: A native port to Microsoft Windows
208: .IP \(bu 2
209: Compiling FreeM as an Apache web server module, allowing FreeM to be used easily for web development
210: .IP \(bu 2
211: The ability to output HTML code in a heredoc-style format, with any line of code beginning with a left angle bracket being interpreted as HTML with support for interpolated M locals and globals
212: .IP \(bu 2
213: Extensions allowing FreeM to be used as a command-line shell, along the lines of UNIX \fIbash\fR, Windows \fIcmd.exe\fR, etc.
214: .PP
1.5 snw 215: Trocha also maintains ownership of the \fIfreem.net\fR Internet domain,
1.3 snw 216: .[
217: trochaDomain
218: .]
1.5 snw 219: and continued issuing public releases of his FreeM port on that site until sometime after 2004, at which point this fork was made entirely private. Currently, freem.net is a blank page. However, trocha's fork of FreeM continues to the present as the back-end storage engine and programming environment for the www.elvenrunes.de website.
1.3 snw 220: .[
221: elvenRunes
222: .]
1.5 snw 223: The author has communicated with Mr. Trocha on occasion, and though he is supportive of the author's efforts, has chosen to remain in the background.
1.1 snw 224: .SH
225: Resuming Primary Development Branch
226: .PP
227: In 2011, the author downloaded the FreeM source code from the GUM Project's SourceForge repository\(emdormant since 2000\(emand updated it just enough that it would compile and run on modern GNU/Linux systems. The author also quickly updated FreeM to support terminal sizes larger than 80x24.
228: .SH
229: Taking Maintainership
230: .PP
1.5 snw 231: In 2014, Lawrence Landis transferred administrative access of the GUMP repository, conferring maintainership of the primary branch of FreeM development to the author. Since then, many features have been added and many bugs corrected, including:
1.3 snw 232: .IP \(bu 2
233: Adding support for proper namespaces, configured through a \fIfreem.conf\fR file, which standardizes routine and global storage locations
234: .IP \(bu 2
235: Adding support for Structured System Variables
236: .IP \(bu 2
237: Adding support for the asynchronous event specification from MDC Type A proposal \fIX11/1998-28\fR
238: .[
239: x119828
240: .]
241: .IP \(bu 2
242: Adding support for constants via the \fICONST\fR keyword
243: .IP \(bu 2
244: Adding a \fIWITH\fR command allowing the specification of an implicit prefix to all subsequent variable references
245: .IP \(bu 2
246: Adding a runtime \fIWATCH\fR command, tracking changes to specified local or global variables
247: .IP \(bu 2
248: Adding an \fIASSERT\fR command, which will fail with an error message if the following expression evaluates \fIfalse\fR
249: .IP \(bu 2
250: Removing the Steve Zeck symbol table implementation\(emwhich was unreliable\(emand reverting to the original implementation
251: .IP \(bu 2
252: Adding support for the GNU \fIreadline\fR library, with persistent command line history and editing
253: .IP \(bu 2
254: Adding REPL-like functionality (in direct mode, any M expression beginning with a number will be prepended with an implicit \fIWRITE\fR)
255: .IP \(bu 2
256: Adding transaction processing
257: .IP \(bu 2
258: Adding \fIKVALUE\fR and \fIKSUBSCRIPTS\fR
259: .IP \(bu 2
260: Preparing to support the \fIM Windowing API\fR (MWAPI)
261: .IP \(bu 2
262: Adding the \fIfmadm\fR command-line utility, for system administration functions
263: .IP \(bu 2
264: Adding support for after-image journaling and forward recovery of globals
1.5 snw 265: .KS
1.3 snw 266: .IP \(bu 2
267: Writing a \fItexinfo\fR manual, from which the HTML manual is derived
268: .IP \(bu 2
269: Porting to Solaris/SPARC, Solaris/x86, Linux/s390x, Linux/armv6l, Linux/armv7l, SCO OpenServer 5.0.7, Tru64 UNIX/alpha, AIX/ppc, Mac OS X/x86, GNU HURD, Cygwin, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and WSL1/2
1.11 ! snw 270:
1.5 snw 271: In addition, the FreeM web site
1.3 snw 272: .[
273: freemWebsite
274: .]
275: was created, to distribute downloads and documentation.
1.5 snw 276: .KE
1.3 snw 277: .SH
278: Future
279: .PP
1.5 snw 280: FreeM is envisioned as a client-oriented desktop M implementation, for developing graphical user interfaces that will run on mobile and desktop devices.
1.3 snw 281: .PP
282: The author also intends to adopt the original vision of the GUMP team, dividing FreeM's functionality into discrete components having a well-specified public interface, with the ability to run in distributed computing environments over a network.
283: .PP
284: FreeM's mission is to advance the state-of-the-art in M implementations, and push the evolution of the language forward. Maintaining portability to as many vintage and modern UNIX systems as possible is held as a high priority, while portability of M routines and MDC standards compliance will be maintained through the use of the new \fI$ZDIALECT\fR intrinsic special variable to ensure that such compliance does not conflict with the primary goal of elegantly advancing the state-of-the-art and finding new audiences for the concepts originated by Neil Pappalardo and Octo Barnett in 1966.
285: .PP
286: The FreeM project is also strongly committed to free software principles, and is firmly aligned with the goals of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, believing that the ethical concerns surrounding proprietary software are at least as important as the practical concerns espoused by the Open Source movement.
287: .[
288: whyFreeSoftware
289: .]
1.5 snw 290: .SH
291: Conclusion
292: .PP
1.7 snw 293: FreeM has seen a colorful and turbulent history, touched by many capable hands. Though public development of any strain of the implementation was dormant for nearly a decade, fourteen years of almost continuous development have passed since the project resumed in 2011, and a decade since official maintainership passed in 2014, and great progress has been made.
294: .PP
295: FreeM\(emas is the case for all M projects\(empresses forward in a period where the future of the M programming language is uncertain. M Development Committee efforts concurrent with FreeM development have been sporadic and have missed many milestones, the community's most prominent members are aging, and many organizations have migrated from large M applications to what is perceived as more "modern" replacements.
296: .PP
297: It is the opinion of the author that the tight integration of an expressive and dynamic language with a robust and performant persistent storage engine makes M a natural candidate for many new and general applications. Modern application development is plagued by overwhelming bars to entry, requiring mastery of many languages and database management systems and the bulky interfaces connecting them.
298: .PP
1.11 ! snw 299: Though not without significant warts accreted over the years, M has no such overhead. Thus, FreeM seeks to press its philosophical advantages by mitigating the language's accumulated cruft, and adding clean interfaces addressing the needs of today. With these goals in mind, development proceeds apace.
1.7 snw 300: .KS
1.5 snw 301: .SH
302: Copyright and License
303: .LP
1.6 snw 304: This document is Copyright \[co] 2025 Serena Willis
1.5 snw 305: .LP
306: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
307: .[
308: gfdl
309: .]
310: Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.
311: .LP
1.11 ! snw 312: \fI$Id: freem_history.ms,v 1.10 2025/04/23 18:44:26 snw Exp $\fR
1.7 snw 313: .KE
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