Rebol ( ; historically REBOL) is a cross-platform data exchange language and a multi-paradigm dynamic programming language designed by Carl Sassenrath for network communications and distributed computing. It introduces the concept of dialecting: small, optimized, domain-specific languages for code and data, which is also the most notable property of the language according to its designer Carl Sassenrath: Douglas Crockford, known for his involvement in the development of JavaScript, has described Rebol as "a more modern language, but with some very similar ideas to Lisp, in that it's all built upon a representation of data which is then executable as programs" and as one of JSON's influences. Originally, the language and its official implementation were proprietary and closed source, developed by REBOL Technologies. Following discussion with Lawrence Rosen, the Rebol version 3 interpreter was released under the Apache 2.0 license on December 12, 2012. Older versions are only available in binary form, and no source release for them is planned. Rebol has been used to program Internet applications (both client- and server-side), database applications, utilities, and multimedia applications. Etymology Rebol was initially an acronym for Relative Expression Based Object Language written in all caps. To align with modern trends in language naming represented, e.g. by the change replacing historical name LISP by Lisp, programmers ceased the practice of writing REBOL in all caps. Sassenrath eventually put the naming question to the community debate on his blog. In subsequent writing, Sassenrath adopted the convention of writing the language name as Rebol. History First released in 1997, Rebol was designed over a 20-year period by Carl Sassenrath, the architect and primary developer of AmigaOS, based on his study of denotational semantics and using concepts from the programming languages Lisp, Forth, Logo, and Self. REBOL Technologies was founded in 1998. REBOL 2, the interpreter, which became the core of extended interpreter editions, was first released in 1999. REBOL/Command, which added strong encryption and ODBC access, was released in September 2000. REBOL/View was released in April 2001, adding graphical abilities on the core language. REBOL/IOS, an extensible collaboration environment built with REBOL was released in August 2001. REBOL/SDK, providing a choice of kernels to bind against, as well as a preprocessor, was released in December 2002. Rebol 3 [R3], the newest version of the interpreter, had alpha versions released by REBOL Technologies since January 2008. Since its release as an Apache 2 project in December