Re: GNAT GPL Edition Maintenance and Upgrades

["Marc A. Criley" <mcNOSPAM@mckae.com>]

Hyman Rosen wrote:
> I'm curious. Do you actually know of any commercial software
> written in Ada? That is, a program written in Ada which is sold
> as a non-customized, shrink-wrapped product to multiple customers?
> Do any of them show up here in c.l.a? Are they complaining?
> 
> I'm afraid that those people for whom you show concern may not
> exist.

You may be right.

Or they simply may not hang around here.

There are a few here that have already stated that their intent is to 
actually produce Ada-implemented "shrinkwrap" product, and I'll admit I 
count myself among them.  For many of us, though, it's still in the 
"intent" mode, and we're working hard on it whenever we can slip in the 
time, so as to hopefully someday get into the "shipping" mode :-)

For myself, I've "come to an understanding" (fully compliant with the 
GPL) with the GNAT GPL edition and what the GPL allows and disallows 
that makes it a workable development platform for me.  It comes down to 
the "AdaCore model", i.e., sell support and make the product so useful 
that your customer wouldn't think of aiding their competitors by giving 
them a copy!

-- Marc A. Criley
-- McKae Technologies
-- www.mckae.com
-- DTraq - XPath In Ada - XML EZ Out