Annotation of papers/freem_history/freem_history.ms, revision 1.8
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1.8 ! snw 2: \" $Id: freem_history.ms,v 1.7 2025/04/23 15:05:45 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 $
1.8 ! snw 8: \" Revision 1.7 2025/04/23 15:05:45 snw
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1.7 snw 11: \" Revision 1.6 2025/04/23 13:32:34 snw
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1.6 snw 14: \" Revision 1.5 2025/04/23 13:29:37 snw
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1.5 snw 17: \" Revision 1.4 2025/04/22 18:16:06 snw
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1.4 snw 20: \" Revision 1.3 2025/04/22 17:54:09 snw
21: \" Initial draft of FreeM History paper
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1.3 snw 23: \" Revision 1.2 2025/04/22 14:56:22 snw
24: \" Add comment header to FreeM History
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1.3 snw 26: \"
27: .R1
28: database ../references.bib
29: move-punctuation
30: .R2
1.1 snw 31: .TL
32: The History of FreeM
33: .AU
34: Serena Willis
35: .AI
36: Coherent Logic Development
37: .AB
1.4 snw 38: 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 39: .AE
40: .SH
41: Initial Involvement
42: .PP
43: The author's mentor in computer programming and UNIX was Larry 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.
44: .PP
1.3 snw 45: Mr. Landis was the owner of FreeM's SourceForge repository
46: .[
47: gumpSF
48: .]
49: , 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.
50: .[
51: freem014
52: .]
1.1 snw 53: .PP
54: 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 55: .[
56: gumpSF
57: .]
1.1 snw 58: .SH
59: Early History
60: .PP
1.3 snw 61: 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,
62: .[
63: freemEvolutionShalom
64: .]
65: 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.
66: .[
67: freemEvolutionISC
68: .]
69: . 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.
70: .[
71: freemREADME
72: .]
1.5 snw 73: .KS
1.3 snw 74: .PP
75: 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.
76: .[
77: portSCO
78: .]
79: This port brought support for the \fIscoansi\fR terminal type, including colors and ANSI X3.64 control mnemonics.
1.5 snw 80: .KE
1.1 snw 81: .SH
82: Enter the GUMP
83: .PP
1.5 snw 84: 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 85: .[
86: c2m
87: .]
88: .PP
89: Although the specification for the GUM interface to global handlers attained a reasonably well-specified level of completeness,
90: .[
91: gumapi
92: .]
93: and Larry Landis and others developed a mostly-complete implementation of a GUM global handler,
94: .[
95: gumpsrc
96: .]
97: none of the other envisioned components were ever completed, and specifically, the interpreter component was missing.
1.1 snw 98: .SH
99: Shalom's Gift
100: .PP
1.5 snw 101: 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 102: .[
103: freemREADME
104: .]
1.1 snw 105: .IP \(bu 2
106: Implement the entirety of \fIANSI X11.1-1995\fR
107: .IP \(bu 2
108: Use Structured System Variables instead of \fIVIEW\fR commands and \fI$VIEW\fR functions
109: .IP \(bu 2
110: Raise the string size limits
111: .IP \(bu 2
112: Implement MWAPI, OMI, X11 bindings, and GKS bindings
113: .IP \(bu 2
114: Be substantially free of major bugs
115: .PP
116: 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.
1.7 snw 117: .KS
1.1 snw 118: .SH
119: Merging GUMP and FreeM
120: .PP
1.5 snw 121: 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 122: .[
123: freemEvolutionShalom
124: .]
125: 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.
126: .[
127: freemContributors
128: .]
1.7 snw 129: .KE
1.3 snw 130: The goals of this team were to:
1.1 snw 131: .IP \(bu 2
132: Meet Shalom's requirements for a public release of FreeMUMPS
133: .IP \(bu 2
134: Convert FreeMUMPS into the first interpreter component of the GUMP
135: .PP
1.5 snw 136: During this period, Ronald L. Fox of Diagnostic Laboratory Services in Honolulu, HI (who passed in 2010)
1.3 snw 137: .[
138: ronFoxGrave
139: .]
140: ported FreeMUMPS from SCO UNIX to Red Hat 5 and glibc-6.
141: .[
142: ronFoxPort
143: .]
144: Steve "Saintly" Zeck of the U.C. Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital
145: .[
146: saintlyBio
147: .]
148: also attempted to rewrite the symbol table code to lift string size limits,
149: .[
150: saintlySymtab
151: .]
1.8 ! snw 152: David Whitten enhanced some of the implementation-specific extensions, and Lawrence Landis integrated Zeck's symbol table work.
1.3 snw 153: .PP
1.5 snw 154: 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 155: .[
156: mdc_implementations
157: .]
158: M implementation.
159: .[
160: Changes.GUM
161: .]
162: Dr. Walters also received the implementation ID of 49 from then secretary of the M Development Committee, Don Piccone.
163: .[
164: Changes.GUM
165: .]
1.1 snw 166: .PP
1.5 snw 167: 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 168: .[
169: trochaFork
170: .]
1.7 snw 171: .KS
1.1 snw 172: .SH
173: The GT.M Free Software Release
174: .PP
175: 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 176: .[
177: fisSanchezAcquisition
178: .]
179: .PP
180: When GT.M was released under the GNU General Public License in 2000,
181: .[
182: gtmRelease
183: .]
1.5 snw 184: 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 185: .[
186: freem050
187: .]
188: However, Axel Trocha's private port would continue to be developed for some years.
1.7 snw 189: .KE
1.1 snw 190: .SH
191: Axel Trocha's Fork
192: .PP
1.5 snw 193: After FreeM's momentum ceased within the primary branch of development under Richard F. Walters' leadership, Axel Trocha, an aforementioned contributor of M vendor routines and member of Dr. Walters' team, continued development on the FreeM source code. Trocha added many interesting features to the FreeM codebase, including:
1.1 snw 194: .IP \(bu 2
195: A native port to Microsoft Windows
196: .IP \(bu 2
197: Compiling FreeM as an Apache web server module, allowing FreeM to be used easily for web development
198: .IP \(bu 2
199: 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
200: .IP \(bu 2
201: Extensions allowing FreeM to be used as a command-line shell, along the lines of UNIX \fIbash\fR, Windows \fIcmd.exe\fR, etc.
202: .PP
1.5 snw 203: Trocha also maintains ownership of the \fIfreem.net\fR Internet domain,
1.3 snw 204: .[
205: trochaDomain
206: .]
1.5 snw 207: 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 208: .[
209: elvenRunes
210: .]
1.5 snw 211: 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 212: .SH
213: Resuming Primary Development Branch
214: .PP
215: 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.
216: .SH
217: Taking Maintainership
218: .PP
1.5 snw 219: 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 220: .IP \(bu 2
221: Adding support for proper namespaces, configured through a \fIfreem.conf\fR file, which standardizes routine and global storage locations
222: .IP \(bu 2
223: Adding support for Structured System Variables
224: .IP \(bu 2
225: Adding support for the asynchronous event specification from MDC Type A proposal \fIX11/1998-28\fR
226: .[
227: x119828
228: .]
229: .IP \(bu 2
230: Adding support for constants via the \fICONST\fR keyword
231: .IP \(bu 2
232: Adding a \fIWITH\fR command allowing the specification of an implicit prefix to all subsequent variable references
233: .IP \(bu 2
234: Adding a runtime \fIWATCH\fR command, tracking changes to specified local or global variables
235: .IP \(bu 2
236: Adding an \fIASSERT\fR command, which will fail with an error message if the following expression evaluates \fIfalse\fR
237: .IP \(bu 2
238: Removing the Steve Zeck symbol table implementation\(emwhich was unreliable\(emand reverting to the original implementation
239: .IP \(bu 2
240: Adding support for the GNU \fIreadline\fR library, with persistent command line history and editing
241: .IP \(bu 2
242: Adding REPL-like functionality (in direct mode, any M expression beginning with a number will be prepended with an implicit \fIWRITE\fR)
243: .IP \(bu 2
244: Adding transaction processing
245: .IP \(bu 2
246: Adding \fIKVALUE\fR and \fIKSUBSCRIPTS\fR
247: .IP \(bu 2
248: Preparing to support the \fIM Windowing API\fR (MWAPI)
249: .IP \(bu 2
250: Adding the \fIfmadm\fR command-line utility, for system administration functions
251: .IP \(bu 2
252: Adding support for after-image journaling and forward recovery of globals
1.5 snw 253: .KS
1.3 snw 254: .IP \(bu 2
255: Writing a \fItexinfo\fR manual, from which the HTML manual is derived
256: .IP \(bu 2
257: 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
258: .PP
1.5 snw 259: In addition, the FreeM web site
1.3 snw 260: .[
261: freemWebsite
262: .]
263: was created, to distribute downloads and documentation.
1.5 snw 264: .KE
1.3 snw 265: .SH
266: Future
267: .PP
1.5 snw 268: 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 269: .PP
270: 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.
271: .PP
272: 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.
273: .PP
274: 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.
275: .[
276: whyFreeSoftware
277: .]
1.5 snw 278: .SH
279: Conclusion
280: .PP
1.7 snw 281: 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.
282: .PP
283: 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.
284: .PP
285: 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.
286: .PP
287: 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 this goal in mind, development proceeds apace.
288: .KS
1.5 snw 289: .SH
290: Copyright and License
291: .LP
1.6 snw 292: This document is Copyright \[co] 2025 Serena Willis
1.5 snw 293: .LP
294: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
295: .[
296: gfdl
297: .]
298: 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.
299: .LP
1.8 ! snw 300: \fI$Id: freem_history.ms,v 1.7 2025/04/23 15:05:45 snw Exp $\fR
1.7 snw 301: .KE
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