Re: How Open Source software developers pay the bills, from within a successful such operation (was): Open Source: in conflict with the development process in the Ada community?

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote in message news:<aa1cde$rbr$1@nh.pace.co.uk>...

> I don't know of any company in any industry that can get away with that sort
> of attitude for very long. This seems especially true for the software
> industry - for either "proprietary" of "open" companies. I don't think the
> license has anything to do with it.  The specific license might raise/lower
> the entrance/exit barriers, but in the end, a company must provide value
> with their software or the customer will go elsewhere. Microsoft with all
> its proprietary licensing still brought out software that cost substantially
> less and provided substantially more value than (for example) OS-360. In
> addition, they *must* find some way of creating *more* value in the future
> or the cash cow dries up. They can't lock in their customers any moreso than
> DeSoto, Studebaker, Dusenberg, Cord, American Motors, Delorean .......

You miss the point. Of course this (behavior commonly referred to as
"bottom feeding") cannot persist for long with respect to a particular
product, but it is remarkably common for a company with a proprietary
software product to essentially abandon continued support, and then
continue to profit from a captive market for what can be a suprising
long time. All I am noting is that our model won't let us do this for
even a short time, and that seems a good thing all round. 

As a company, our policy is to rely on rapid innovation rather than
on restrictive intellectual property rights. We are convinced that if
we continue to innovate rapidly, we can continue to be successful, and
we think this is a model that benefits both us and our customers.

I should also say that I think it leads to a much more satisfying
environment
for software developers. I still spend a lot of my time improving GNAT
by
adding new functionality and improving what is already there, and I
find it
very satisfying that the code I write is open for examination (and
hopefully
appreciation :-) by others. In more concrete terms, I think that this
openness
is one of the reasons that no software engineer has ever left Ada Core
Technologies in its seven years of existance. Which is surprising,
especially
since we can't dangle stock options worth potential millions as an
incentive.

Again, please interpret the above remembering that I have an interest
(both
financial, but more importantly personal, and from the point of view
of general success of Ada) in the continuing success of ACT :-)

Robert Dewar