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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: HTML as GNAT source
Date: 1998/02/09
Message-ID: <dewar.887003250@merv>#1/1
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Date: 1998-02-09T00:00:00+00:00
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Robert Leif says

<<Present Ada software pricing often is a boolean, exorbitant or no cost.
  Neither is a good choice.  All significant software including quality
  products written in Ada require maintenance. The best guarantee of good
  timely maintenance is that your vendor makes a profit.  I suspect that
  virtually all of the software vendors including the Free software vendors
  will agree with this statement.>>

Actually I think our model of making a profit rather directly addresses
the issue of providing a guarantee of good and timely maintenance. Namely,
we make our profit from providing good and timely maintenance.

We agree that cost-free Ada software would be difficult to support, and
certainly Ada Core Technologies is not in the business of providing
cost-free software to serious users of Ada. Yes, we do provide public
releases of our technology for use by students and others for whom
getting good and timely maintenance, and all the other services that
good support provides, is not important, but that is quite another
matter.

If Robert Leif is saying that the model of free software with paid
support is not a "good choice", I am not sure why he thinks this. It
is certainly the case that Robert considers that we charge too much
for support, and would like to get support from us for much less
money (we know this from conversations we have had with him), to
which we respond that good support is indeed, as Robert appears to
note above, not free!

I am all in favor of Ada vendors making a profit, or at least comfortably
breaking even. We find our business model is entirely compatible with
this goal, and that it generates the income that is needed to ensure
continuing development and support of our Ada 95 products. We cannot
of course speak for other vendors.

Note incidentally that Robert Leif's statement above makes the very
common mistake of mixing up the two meanings of free (though he does
capitalize one and not the other). Free software is all about what
customers can do with the software, i.e. they are free to modify,
redistribute and otherwise make broad use of the software. It is
not about free as in free lunch. I actually don't know anyone providing
supported Ada 95 products at no cost, and would find it surprising if
anyone could afford to do so.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies