Re: gnat-3.10

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

Ronald says

<<                  MAKE MONEY FAST HOARDING GPL'D SOFTWARE
                          Version 1, June 1997

1.  Make very useful enhancements to software that Stallman and others
    have worked hard on to make "free".
2.  GPL those useful enhancements.
3.  Find companies that are willing to pay big bucks for said
    enhancements.
4.  Said companies, after paying through the nose for GPL'd software,
    are unwilling to re-distribute because the GPL apparently only
    obligates one to distribute source if one distributes binaries.
    (Why would someone want to incur this obligation for something
    they had to pay a lot of money to acquire in the first place?)
>>


Well I guess Ronald finally understands the GPL :-)

In practice this scenario is of limited likelihood, and that is why it
has not happened in practice. If one charged "big bucks" for the enhancements
you had made, and if companies were willing to pay the big bucks, then an
obvious thing happens:

   1. If you charge say $1 million for your wonderfgul enhancements

   2. And lots of companies are willing to pay $1 million

   3. Then someone will buy it for $1 million

   4. And undercut your business by selling it for the bargain price of 
	say $200,000

But as I have said all along, there is nothing that requires you to 
distribute something you do under the GPL. One of the freedoms it confers
is the freedom to distribute your work to whomever you please. The
ultimate hoarding that can occur is if someone makes wonderful software
and keeps it to themselves completely, but no one in the GNU world thinks
for a monment that this should be prevented.

As I have frequently noted, there is nothing that requires ACT to continue
to make binary versions of GNAT available. It is something we choose to do as
a service to the Ada community.

Ron will just have to wait like everyone else for the public release of
3.10 which will happen in due time when we judge it to be appropriate. At
that time Ron can pick up a copy (whose availability is made possible by 
ACT customers who do pay for support :-) and start griping about 3.10 :-)

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

P.S. I quite realize that there are people with quite extreme views on
how software should be distributed and shared, but you should not assume
that everyone else shares these views. Now if Ron would put his energy
into providing free software, rather than trying to get hold of 3.10
before we consider it ready for public release, that would be more helpful.
But I guess the communistic view always appeals more to those who need what
they do not have, as opposed to those who have what they do not need :-)