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Mala source code?

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fkane:
Given that Mala, and its website, have not been updated since 2011 - has any thought been given to making it open source, or at least making the source code available so the user community can fix issues that crop up?

A great example is the problem with Windows 7 where an OS-initiated shutdown gets blocked by Mala not responding the to the close event. Seems that would be a simple fix - if only I had the source.

Mala's great, but incompatibilities that couldn't have been anticipated 2 years ago are likely to keep piling up.

capitaineflam25:
+1

i'd love to help correcting a few bugs

drventure:
Loadman is still maintaining Mala, though I believe he's gotten sidetracke by life over the last year or so.

Mala was originally written by Swindus and when Loadman took over, I believe the agreement was to keep it closed source.

That was primarily because Mala uses some video libraries (and possibly other libs) that are commercial, and so open sourcing Mala proper wouldn't much help if you didn't have those libs.

Finally, I believe Malas written in turbopascal or some such, ie not a particularly common language anymore.

Personally, it might still be nice to open source it, if only to make porting to .net or some other language a bit easier. But that's a call loadman would have to make (possibly after talking with the original author).

bosco:
I would love to see it open source.  I think there are plenty of people that would love to contribute.  I don't see a point of keeping a dead program closed source.  I love MaLa but it sure can be buggy.

drventure:
Well, I doubt just open sourcing it would help much, since there are commercial components used in it. It would need to be refactored to not use those components (and there were good reasons Loadman chose to use those components) or ported to a different language altogether.

Personally, I'd love to convert (or rewrite) it to .net and use WPF as the UI foundation, but I just don't have time to take on a project like that right now.

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