Re: Ada's (in)visibility and pricing!

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!csc.ti.com!tilde.csc.ti.co m!mksol!mccall@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (fred j mccall 575-3539)]

In <PAT.92Sep16084002@peak.opus> pat@peak.opus (pat gioannini) writes:

>I agree, this is insane.  The Sun SPARC 1 compiler is probably
>identical to the Sparc 2 ( and if it is not it should be ).  
>When I asked one vendor why they had this pricing arrangement
>the said that it was because of the precieved power of the
>machine; the compiler was in fact identical.  I asked another
>vendor why their VMS compiler was ~$50,000 when their unix
>compiler was ~$10,000.  Both of these compilers were cross compilers 
>to the same target.  The answer boiled down to people
>expect to pay more for a VMS compiler.
> 
>Can anybody give a rational explaination for these pricing
>schemes.  For people who what to use Ada pricing the the 
>single biggest problem.

I would expect that the pricing is based on the expected number of
simultaneous users (in most cases).  Hence the more powerful the
machine, the more it costs to license software on that machine.  This,
as silly as it seems from my point of view, seems to be the rule
rather than the exception.  It's not just Ada compilers.  Practically
all software seems to license this way.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.