Re: Licences

[Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>]

>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Whalen <SteveWhalen001@hotmail.com> writes:

    Steve> I know of at least one programmer who wrote and sold a
    Steve> program after I got him interested in Ada via the GNAT
    Steve> compilers. That cannot happen anymore because a binary only
    Steve> program cannot be "sold" from the AdaCore GPL compiler (the
    Steve> program that was sold that I'm referring to here did NOT
    Steve> generate enough money to pay for an AdaCore support
    Steve> contract, though it did pay for a few presents for the wife
    Steve> to make up for late nights spent on the computer <g>). It
    Steve> is now much harder to get these kinds of Ada converts
    Steve> without a free Ada compiler.

It would appear Adacore has forgotten the "proprietary programs
written by individuals or small companies that cannot afford and do
not want to pay for an expensive support contract" market. As well as
open source programs that do not use a GPL compatible license (for any
number of reasons - personally like others I like using current
versions of GPL in my own code).

I could understand this if Ada was more popular.

In a way, the goal of the license is similar to the free version
BitKeeper - free for open source but paid (at high rates geared at big
projects IRC) for closed source software. At one time I believe the
code was "open source" (but restrictive license). Then it changed to
free binary + restrictive license. I think the situation has now
changed, I don't think they support a free version anymore - lets hope
Adacore doesn't revoke the free version in the same manner (I got the
impression at LCA2005 that this was a bitter dispute with various
parties throwing insults and accusations at each other - I think on
the linux-kernel mailing lists).

Fortunately, I believe in this case, FSF holds the copyright, so
presumably Adacore can't restrict access any more then making it GPL.

However, I think the people Adacore "forgot" will use the gcc gnat
compiler now instead. This in turn hopefully will lead to my
development with this compiler.

I suspect the end result is that people will end up continuing to use
the compiler they are most familiar with - even when the project
justifies paying the $$$ for the Adacore supported compiler.
-- 
Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>