From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,d311338eabd7ca93 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Received: by 10.68.226.10 with SMTP id ro10mr2758314pbc.6.1328207219561; Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:26:59 -0800 (PST) Path: lh20ni253002pbb.0!nntp.google.com!news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!eb6g2000vbb.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Erich Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Compiler business prospects Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 10:19:21 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <08d75622-44ae-407f-8cac-755874c2d48d@eb6g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> References: <4f27e278$0$6549$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net> <12716838.1333.1328020580723.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@prhq14> <82fwetfu0r.fsf@stephe-leake.org> <8739atjijy.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: 85.241.96.9 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1328207219 32664 127.0.0.1 (2 Feb 2012 18:26:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 18:26:59 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: eb6g2000vbb.googlegroups.com; posting-host=85.241.96.9; posting-account=nd46uAkAAAB2IU3eJoKQE6q_ACEyvPP_ User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-Google-Web-Client: true X-Google-Header-Order: HUALESNKC X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Ubuntu; X11; Linux x86_64; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/9.0.1,gzip(gfe) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Date: 2012-02-02T10:19:21-08:00 List-Id: > > Seehttp://fosdem.org/2012/schedule/event/keynotes_model_success > > You *can* sell GPL software and make a profit. That's just a fact. I really didn't want to get into this discussion but I have to reply to this, because your claim is completely misleading. The talk you link to is about AdaCore. Sure you can make money with business-to- business software, especially when it involves very special know-how, but you do *not* make the money by selling the software. You are paid for the consulting, product service, and maintenance and *not* for the software. I'm talking about making moderate amounts of money with non-business- to-business, generic end-consumer software - where an executable is deployed to Joe, the user, from a box on a shelf or via download and payment by a payment service provider (Paypal, Kagi, etc.). This kind of software does not require any consulting or services, because it works out-of-the-box and does not require any skills to operate. For example, I'm currently working on a word processing application with unique features for creative writers such as style checking, "dark room" minimal user interface, automatic backup and versioning, automatic project management, extremely fast notetaking and search functions, etc. The only way you could make money with that under GPL was with a ridiculously large user base (>1 million, which means a few people might pay for charity) or, say, by convincing the US government to buy 10000 copies+5 year maintenance contract. <-- Joke Anyway, I welcome it when other people make money with GPL software but in many of not most cases, and certainly in mine, this is an utterly unrealistic perspective. > AFAIU, Qt has been licensed under LGPL since 2009. LGPL does not allow static linking with the executable. I was assuming that QtAda statically links with the Qt libraries, and anyway GMPL/ =LGPL, both of which seems to imply that the GMPL version of QtAda must be based on the commercial version of Qt.