Re: Compiler business prospects

[Erich <john@peppermind.com>]

> If you are asking for non-open-source commercial software, that is also
> a different matter.
> Can you be more precise about what your problem is?

Sure, but I'm not sure if it's wise, because presumably this has been
discussed already in the past. Look, I have nothing against the GPL
and am even planning to release some smaller projects under the GPL,
but the fact of the matter is that you *cannot* successfully sell
shareware or run a small business under the GPL because someone will
grab the source code and give his version away for free. That's just a
fact.

BTW, there is no real problem for me because I'm already using Racket
successfully for my GUIs. I was just a bit disappointed that there
seems to be no way to use Ada for that. Languages like the following
ones offer free (as in beer) LGPL bindings to GUI toolkits: C++, tcsl,
Perl, Ruby, Racket, FreePascal, ... just to name a few. For successful
shareware business the key is to provide executables for each major
platform that run immediately out of the box with a native and well-
crafted GUI. Toolkits like Qt make that possible but unfortunately Ada
is the only language I've seen so far where you have to pay for
bindings that allow non-GPL distributions.

> Source: http://www.qtada.com/en/licensing.html
> Providing the OP enjoy Qt (I personally don't, except for platforms where
> it's the native toolkit).

Yes, but how much is the GMPL license? I suppose the problem is that
QtAda must be based on the commercial version of Qt, because otherwise
you wouldn't be allowed to statically link to the Qt libraries, and of
course I understand when people want a return for their investment.