RE: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

["rleif" <rleif@cox.net>]

This is the typical argument for GPL, which I totally reject. By any
economic standard, the developers were defrauded of the fruits of their
labor. In fact, Karl Mark in Das Kapital never considered the workers
receiving that small a part of the payment for the fruits of their labor. 

Hyman Rosen stated, "Several of its (RedHat) employees are on the GCC
steering committee." If I were getting free labor, I definitely would place
my employees on the steering committee. What you have described is George
Orwell's Animal Farm. "Some of us are more equal than others." 

Stallman was absolutely correct about making the sources available. This was
a great contribution. The next step is to decouple the excellent idea of the
availability of the sources from the exploitive economics of the Free
Software Foundation. This is what I have proposed to do. The added benefit
is that because of ASIS, Ada is by far the best language for profitable
cooperative software development. In short, one should work for one's own
benefit and not to benefit IBM, RedHat, and others.

Since the use of commercial C++ software drivers for my instruments has
provided a week of suffering that has made me particularly testy, I will
also note the GPL is one of the causes of ACT's extremely bi-level pricing
policy, free or very expensive. In order for Ada to be truly COTS, she
desperately needs products with PC type pricing. In a standard PC market,
ACT would have an incentive to productize and support A#. Because of the
economics of the GPL, this is not the case for ACT. I might note that I
still have the highest regard for the technical competence of the ACT group.


Bob Leif
Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.
Email rleif@rleif.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Hyman Rosen [mailto:hyrosen@mail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2003 12:10 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

rleif wrote:
> Yes, and my paper showing how the developers were ripped off when RedHat
> went public is also posted on www.newportinstruments.com.

This is utter nonsense. Those developers released their code under the GPL
for years before RedHat even existed. When RedHat went public they decided
to try to share some money with the developers, even though they were under
no obligation to do so.

RedHat distributes GPLed software, and tries to make money by doing this.
Anyone else may try to do the same, including any of the developers of the
distributed software.

ACT continues to develop GNAT and associated technology, including brand new
projects such as GPS, under the GPL. Apparently they don't feel ripped off.

RedHat itself contributes back to the community. Several of its employees
are
on the GCC steering committee, actively working on improving the compilers.
The GNAT Ada technology is now a public part of this.

RedHat is working with the GPL in exactly the way it was intended to work.
Any developer who feels ripped off has only himself to blame for not
understanding what releasing under the GPL means.