From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f7344,3307180c36b2ddde X-Google-Attributes: gidf7344,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,818bb9686cf8adae X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Dec Ditching Ada? Date: 1996/09/06 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 178996308 references: <4vi32h$bu1@jake.esu.edu> <321CF074.6E54@mdc.com> <3221E317.5D2B@mdc.com> <50jqic$293h@ilx018.iil.intel.com> <1996Sep5.092514.1@eisner> <1996Sep6.091045.1@eisner> organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.os.vms Date: 1996-09-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Larry said You may ask why I should care, and I believe the answer is that with the GPL-support economic model, you are not making enough money for me to feel comfortable. Regardless of how much money you may make, it is possible I would never feel comfortable. Curious. In your first sentence you worry about us not making enough money, but then you immediately show this is not your real concern, by saying that it would not make any difference if we did make lots of money! Certainly it is reasonable to worry about the financial health of any company you deal with, but past experience in the Ada market has certainly indicated that charging high prices for proprietary products is not a guarantee of prosperity! I am sure all Ada fans would agree that distinct meanings where possible are better than overloading. The distinct economic models I see are: Well to us, commerce, look it up, has to do with selling products and trying on the one hand to satisfy customer needs, and on the other trying to make some money! Of course I can do nothing about your comfort, but there is a real reason for distinguishing between proprietary and commercial software If I say to a consulting client "let's use a _commercial_ product", that has the meaning, developed over the years, of an approach which necessitates a per-seat charge (or site-license). To ask for a change in meaning is akin to asking for a change in the Ada 95 tagged type syntax to make it be like C++ :-). But GNAT very definitely involves a per-set charge (or site-license) if you are, like most serious users of any software (or any other product for that matter) interested in having the vendor stand behind the product, and provide any needed support. This is quite distinct from unsupported free software, which may be usable in some circumstances, but on which your consulting clients might be understandably reluctant to depend. The idea of strictly licensed software is simply one commercial model for selling software services. The free software (note that the free here refers to free as in free speach, not free as in free lunch!) approach is another commercial model for selling software services. This is very different from freeware, where the emphasis is often on free as in $0. There are now several software companies which use the free software model for commercial support of high quality software, and they seem to be reasonably successful. Time will tell. There are two big advantages of the free software model for consumers: 1. Access to the sources means you do not have a black box effect of not knowing what you are dealing with. 2. Since the company you are dealing with sells only support, they are likely to put a lot of effort into providing high quality support, since that is what they have to sell. All to often with proprietary software, you buy the product, the company makes most of its money up front, and you take whatever support you can get, good or bad. Note that I do NOT include in this list zero, or even low cost. Indeed GNAT is not always the lowest cost solution, and in some situations a lower cost approach using one of the packaged proprietary compilers may be acceptably effective (depending on many factors, such as the level of support needed, and what subset of the language you need). As always in the world of commerce you choose the best product that meets your needs and is consistent with what you can afford. But the idea that there is a huge difference between paying $1000 for the software and $200 for support, as opposed to paying $0 for the software and $1200 for spuport really makes no sense. The company involved makes the same amount of money, you pay the same, and perhaps you get the sme level of service, or perhaps not! Robert Dewar President Ada Core Technologies P.S. In our experience it is indeed common for people to shy away from the notion of free software, but that is because they associate the idea with unsupported freeware, of the type available in large amounts for the PC for example, much of which does not begin to approach any kind of reasonable quality. We have found that once our customers understand the commercial model involved here, it makes a lot of sense to them and definitely can meet their needs.