Re: Dec Ditching Ada?

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Ted said

"That's a good argument for calling ACT commercial. GNAT itself, not being
owned by anyone and being freely available, would not seem to fit the
definition."

Well a piece of software, whether proprietary or not, is not of itself
commercial. The commerce has to do with providing the product and
supporting it! The important distinction is between unsupported freeware
(where the free is the kind of free in free beer), and supported free
software (where the free is the kind of free in free speech). That's
an important distinction because people are understandably nerbous about
using unsupported software.

Certainly there may be people who like to pay for software itself without
getting support. Note that there is absolutely NOTHING that stops anyone
from selling GNAT with or without support. Perhaps we should offer two
products:

   GNAT Ada 95 compiler, including one year of free support    $1200
   One year of support for GNAT Ada 95 compiler, compiler
     included free of charge                                   $1200

and let people choose which they want :-)

Usually in my experience people who insist on saying that GNAT is not
a commercial product are those who, for whatever reason, don't like
the idea of free software. Note that whoever started this thread
freely admitted that even if ACT were wildly successful financially,
he would still not feel comfortable with free software.

On the other hand, there are those of us who never feel really comfortable
with proprietary software where we cannot see the sources, even if it is
priced affordably :-)

I do perfectly well understand people being concerned about the financial
health of any company they deal with. What I can say in response to that
is that we are in business and doing fine, while clearly past history
shows that selling proprietary Ada compilers is certainly no guarantee
of financial health or continued existence.

I really think the free vs proprietary software issue has little to do
with a company's health, which is much more a matter of the products
they offer, and whether customers want these products. So far the
free software companies (there are six of them, seven if you count
ACT/Europe as a separate company, which it is), seem to be doing fine.
I certainly don't know of any free software company failing, something
I certainly *cannot* say about companies selling proprietary software.

Robert