Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

[Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org (Colin Paul Gloster)]

Hyman Rosen wrote in response to things Rob Leif said:

"[..]  
> 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.

Really? First of all, "PC-type pricing" for compilers is now going for
around US$1000 per seat. Have you looked the prices for a Microsoft
development system lately? And do you think that gets you live human
support for your problems? Employing people to answer questions and
help with development is enormously expensive. My wife owns a software
company which provides such handholding for its clients. She leases the
software for over $2000 per seat *per month*.

The ACT model is wonderful. Companies who really need the support and can
pay the freight defray the costs for having a high-quality implementation
of Ada available to everyone for free. [..]
  
[..]
  
There's also the fact that the wide platform availability of GNAT comes
"free" as a result of being based on the existing GPLed gcc back end, and
that the original development of GNAT was paid for through tax dollars.

[..]"

ACT received taxes to assist in the porting of GNAT for SPARC to ORK
(which targets a SPARC). ORK is buggy.
  
"[..]

And note that ACT does not just use the GPL, they take special pains to make
public versions available so that people can use their free version easily,
even though they are under no obligation to do so.

[..]"

This is a nice gesture.