Closure of this forum

[DDRM]

Richard has provided the following statement:

"I fully understand and respect the opinions of the small minority of members who do not wish me to post to the forum, and whilst they hold that view I won't attempt to do so. However it is immensely frustrating to be having to fund the extra storage and bandwidth required to host the forum when I am not able to use it myself.

I would therefore propose restoring the hosting package for 'bbcbasic.co.uk' to its former, cheaper, level which was sufficient to meet the needs of the website but not of the forum. This would involve either closing the forum down or moving it to an alternative host (perhaps one funded by advertising such as ProBoards).

If the forum is moved I would be prepared to host a forwarding page so that links (for example in the Help menus of BB4W and BBCSDL) continue to work."

He proposes to close down this forum after one month, though if a little more time is needed to allow someone to complete the setting up of a replacement/migration, that is open for negotiation.

Is there anyone out there willing to take on such a migration? Unfortunately I lack both the time and the expertise to do it myself.

Best wishes,

D

[Edja]

Without Richard - even with the highly appreciated (!) support of a number of other enthusiasts - the most valuable source of knowledge, information and support is missing. This is blatantly obvious.
Elsewhere on the forum I read that everyone, including me, is eagerly awaiting Richard's return to the forum. I have not seen any sign anymore from the mentioned "small minority of members who ..."

Isn't that the simplest, and by far the best, solution ? I really hope Richard will agree and not close the forum. But if he chooses otherwise, for whatever personal, maybe health related, reason then I fully respect this

Eddy

[DDRM]

Thanks, Eddy - that's my view too. It seems obvious to me that Richard returning to the forum, even with the prospective loss of some members, is better than simply closing it down, with the loss to ALL members. However in the end Richard has to be happy with the arrangement, so as far as I am concerned the matter is now in his hands.

If there ARE members who would be discontented by his return, and they wish to set up an alternative forum, of course that option remains open either way. I'd be interested in being a member of that forum as well as this one, as I suspect might others, so if there IS such a plan it might be nice to post a notice here before its closure/their departure. I think that would be acceptable to Richard, since he has said he would be happy to host a link to a moved version of this forum.

Best wishes,

D

[AllanL5]

What a shame.
I just this month (July 2019) discovered BB4W.
I've been looking for quite some time to find a version of BASIC that will run as a 32 or 64 bit application under Windows-10.
And hopefully the Basic was more-or-less Microsoft compatible.
BBC Basic adds those lovely real PROC and FN constructs.
So, having finally found all these features in BB4W, I now discover the person maintaining the package is leaving its forum.
Which is disappointing.

Personally, I learned my beginning programming through using BASIC on the C64. This simple environment is no longer available.
I was hoping to utilize BB4W as a beginning environment for new programmers. I've been astonished at the depths of interface
included with BB4W -- which would enable teaching a subset of the language to begin with, but not limit the student in the future.

Currently, I'm a software engineer with a 30-year career. Currently I'm using Java, C, C++, Perl, PHP, and Python.
And in the last few weeks, BB4W. For which I'm very thankful.
I'm still going to pursue this instructional strategy, but I guess I'll have to do it without this forum.
Still, I thank you for the package.

[David Williams]

AllanL5 wrote: "I just this month (July 2019) discovered BB4W."

Welcome. It's rather quiet around here these days, as you've probably noticed!

I don't know if you're aware of my website: http://www.proggies.uk/

You will find links and various other resources there.


David.
--

[AllanL5]

Cool, I will check it out.

[DDRM]

Update:

We're still here...

I understand that RIchard and one of the users here are in negotiations about a possible replacement forum. If/when this is up and running, I'll post another update.

Best wishes,

D

[rrTea]

Hi all, after a long break I rediscovered bb4w/bbcsdl so I wanted to check how are things progressing here and I found this thread ! This is not what I was hoping to find. After reading a bit about it here and there I have the feeling I still don't know the full background but:

Quote:
"Without Richard - even with the highly appreciated (!) support of a number of other enthusiasts - the most valuable source of knowledge, information and support is missing. This is blatantly obvious.
Elsewhere on the forum I read that everyone, including me, is eagerly awaiting Richard's return to the forum. I have not seen any sign anymore from the mentioned "small minority of members who ..."

Isn't that the simplest, and by far the best, solution ? I really hope Richard will agree and not close the forum. But if he chooses otherwise, for whatever personal, maybe health related, reason then I fully respect this"

Same here, word by word.

In this situation the opinion of "a small minority" should definitely not be the guiding principle. As quoted above, obviously if it's something health / other personal reasons (lack of time ?) related than of course there's no debating it, but if all there is to it is a few guys who are unhappy with how things are run here, they are always welcome to set up their own forum !