Re: Ada for MacOS/BeOS

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

Dale said

<<I always thought it would be nice if Meridian Ada was made
public domain/GNU'ed. It's a nice little compiler and with
a bit of work may be able to do some extra useful ada95 things.
(e.g. modular types, out mode parameters, function pointers).
>>

First, just a standard note for new readers :-)
I don't know what GNU'ed means, most likely it is a misprint for GPL'ed.
GNU is the name of an operating system, and even in the most generous
interpretation of the allowance of verbizing in English, I cannot see
how GNU can be a verb.

Assuming that indeed GPL'ed was intended, it is important to emphasize that
GPL'ed software is NOT public domain. On the contrary it is fully copyrighted,
and typically the copyright holder will strenuously enforce their rights
under the copyright law to fully control the use of their intellectual
property. Yes, the GPL means that the holder will license very broad use,
but under the law, and in practice, no intellectual property rights are
being ceded here. By comparison, putting something in the public domain
explicitly gives up all IPR's.

As for putting Meridian Ada in the public domain or GPL'ing it and releasing
the sources, probably neither is practical. First the parties involved would
have to decide that there was no remaining value in the compiler as property
(a decision made less likely by the judgment of an expert member of the
Ada community that this is a "nice little compiler" which "may  be able
to do .. useful .. things". Second everyone would have to agree to the
change in status. This would cost time and effort with lawyers etc (I 
would be very surprised for example if the transfer of the ownership
to this product was not very restrictive, and indeed it would not be
surprising to find that Heath did not have the sources). I can't see
anyone spending this time for no gain.

This general phenomenon explains why many old software packges remain
locked up in a proprietary strait-jacket. All in all, it is best if you
want freely distributable software to start out that way :-)

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

P.S. I don't think that the 48 megs of memory you say is needed is much of
a barrier any more. Insight this week is selling 32 meg EDO memory modules
for less than $80. That's not much more than the cost of a textbook, and
definitely in range of typical students (actually I am pretty amazed by
the nice hardware that my students have).