Red: A programming language inspired by REBOL

how did greed ruin it?

I had tried it out a bit earlier, but don't remember reading anything about it getting ruined.

GP probably means being initially released under a proprietary license.

The problem at this stage is, the older versions of the software which are complete and which everyone historically used are closed source and now out of date because they target OSes from eleven years ago, and there’s an open source version which nobody contributes to because it’s incomplete and different than the version everyone used.

As with - for example - the classic Netscape browser, it would have made more sense to just open source the one people used, rather than some new and incomplete thing. The pertinent difference being there weren’t thousands of open source developers waiting to take up the slack and help finish an incomplete version of REBOL.

(Someone more familiar is welcome to correct me on the details)

thanks, guys.

As I remember it; it was free for personal use, but if you were to use it commercially, you had to pay a license cost. There also was a server version which could set you back thousands of dollars. If you wanted to export the REBOL API which you could create using the REBOL SDK to users, you needed a separate distribution license. It was a mess. When REBOL finally went open source in 2012, it was too late, everyone had moved on.

I sure hope that merely not being free, for all uses, forever, would be enough to tank it. Not to hate on Rebol specifically nor people wanting to make money off their work in general but a non-free language is just unacceptable.

I think it was more about it not being worth the money. REBOL was clever and all, but when you do compete with free stuff, you can't just set whatever price you like - it has to make sense for the customer.