Re: Laser printing from ADA (Windows)

[Ehud Lamm <mslamm@mscc.huji.ac.il>]

On Wed, 28 Oct 1998, Tom Moran wrote:

> Having paid for the vast majority of my C coded programs, I'm
> surprised to hear that everything in C and C++ is public domain.
> Having posted a substantial amount of Ada source code in the past to
> BIX and Compuserve (and the PAL, although they apparently dropped it)
> I feel that I've contributed at least my share of free software.  
>  Since my grocer wants cash, I cannot afford to donate 100% of my
> time to writing and giving away free software.  If you want things
> like the Windows printer code this thread started with, you can either
> pay to buy what's available today, or you can wait until someone has
> free time to write it for you - in fact CLAW exists today, and Jerry
> van Dijk implied that he might make available a free version in the
> future.  So you can pay in money or waiting - your choice.   

I think this thread is really starting to diverge too much.

But when on this topic of free code, let's make a few points clearer.

One can be in favor of public domain code, and software sharing and still
believe it is morally accpetable and practically inevitable to sell
software. 

It is also clear that in many cases it makes life easier if you find some
code already written you can build on. For this people need to be able and
willing to donate code. It is entirely with them to decide whether they
want to give code away for free, the ammount and the licenscing required.

All these issues are not really relevant to comp.lang.ada etc.

What may be of interest is to comapre two things:
1)The ammount of code publicly available. This is interesting as it both
tells you something about the community and about where it may be more
interesting to lock.

2)How easy it is to find public code AND integrate it into new code. This
may give hints into the reuse powers of the language. We may safely assume
that using a set of routines encapsulated in a package is easier than
simply trying to combine many C routines. Beyond this trivial comparison,
things get more complex and more interesting.

Since this thread stated because of a question of mine, I feel I need to
make myself clear. If I want free code, so I can point my students to it
and let them explore, it does not mean I think anybody owes me such code,
or that any of you should not be payed by whom ever is employing you right
now. :-)

Ehud Lamm     mslamm@mscc.huji.ac.il