Re: Proving Correctness (was Java Portability)

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

Well, if you mean that, for example, you "sponsor" me to write a square root
routine and put it out under some flavor of the GPL on the net where you can
download it and use it and your "sponsorship" consists of writing me a check
for $50.00 US, then obviously, I have received some remuneration for doing
this and (under GPL) this is about all I could reasonably expect. Possibly,
I could make some additional money from providing customer driven updates to
the square root routine and maybe get some fees for lecturing about the
design of the square root routine and that would have to figure into my
decision to undertake the work.

If someone makes a deal like this, more power to them! They are getting some
kind of remuneration for their work rather than just simply giving it away
and hence they gain in doing it and have incentive to continue to follow up
on it. Its not at all a bad thing. However, I'm not aware of very many of
these sorts of arrangements being made. Obviously, the willingness of people
to develop under these terms is going to depend on how large the check is
that you send them. The more money, the more likely you'll find willing
developers.

As to the equity of this situation - that's for us both to determine in the
process. Is $50 to me worth the time I'll spend developing the square root
code? No? Can I see enough back-end business coming out of it that I might
still develop it? This is essentially a work made for hire and I've got no
problems with whatever license terms you want to put on it - except insofar
as it may influence the amount of money I expect to do the job.

But if Ada's success is going to depend on lots of people developing
software with no thought as to financial gain, then I doubt it will see much
success. That's why I favor something like the ADCL as a means of holding
out *some* financial incentive that might encourage people to develop
software on speculation that they might get some back-end reward. If someone
doesn't like the ADCL, I'd like to hear an alternative that promotes wide
circulation and use of Ada source and holds out some financial reward for
the guy who develops it. We might find lots of entrepeneurs in this
newsgroup alone who would undertake significant projects if they thought
they might get some financial reward out of it.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Georg Bauhaus" <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> wrote in message
news:9ks3e9$69v$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de...
> Marin David Condic <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote:
> : I'm not sure what you are suggesting here.
>
> Yes, something like the first two cases.
> It pays programmers as long as they are developing
> a much needed library. If their is sufficient demand
> for a GMGPL XML library, say, some skilled Ada programmer
> could write one. If this person is know to those who are
> interested, they might be ready to "sponsor" the development
> of that library.
>
> Maybe then someone could join Simon Wright in developing
> the 95 Booch components, wouldn't there be quite some
> opportunities, to make good use of them?
>
> The basic issue for me is then, how can we make more
> people understand that the development of _any_ software
> costs time and money, be that Free Software, or Don't-Disassemble-Ware.
> Some already do, but I won't guess how many.
>