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From: G.B. <nonlegitur@futureapps.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: GNAT GPL is not shareware
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2015 09:49:27 +0000 (UTC)
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Date: 2015-01-31T09:49:27+00:00
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"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
> "Jedi Tek'Unum" <jeditekunum@gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:dd0af6d6-f6bb-4330-bbf9-b888108df90b@googlegroups.com...
> 
>> GPL violators are common but nowhere else is an entire language held 
>> hostage.
> 
> Bull. The GPL (and free software in general) have destroyed the professional 
> software market by devaluing it.

Ada, through its better and fully working implementations,
has always suffered from overpricing.

That's not just a frequently heard observation. It's recorded history.

Ada was commissioned to reduce the number of programming languages
(400+, per Whitaker's assessment) used by one large organisation. C has
achieved this goal, in embedded systems or at the OS level.

> Plenty of other professional languages "are held hostage", because they 
> don't even exist (at least in any usable form). There is no way to get them 
> built, because there is no hope of making any money on them. All one gets is 
> hobby languages built to support trial-and-error (emphasis on the "error") 
> program creation. Nothing remotely professional about that.

There are still only very few opportunities for promising academics
and professionals from industry to cooperate on languages in
groundbreaking ways, long term. Like there seems to have been when
Ada did not exists yet, but was wanted. Outside the Big Corps (including
MIT?)
that are producing and controlling languages, there is little public
consultation and cooperation (surprise?).
Individualism disconnected, too strong the hope and the belief that venture
capital plus market mechanism will produce a good solution from individual
offerings. So, we are back to a multitude of incompatible and
incomplete drafts, some of them surviving because of the the Big Corps
and its followers.