Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available

[randhol@bacchus.pvv.ntnu.no (Preben Randhol)]

In article <6cFjLy+0$XDn@eisner.encompasserve.org>, Larry Kilgallen wrote:
>In article <1127171105.496123.178650@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, wojtek@power.com.pl writes:
>
>> Try to convince some venture capitalists, or high level managers, that
>> it's better to code in Ada, even thought you'll have to supply your
>> sources to the customers (practically also competitors) under GPL.
>
>Presumably any company with "venture capitalists" or "high level managers"
>has no hesitation about paying for compiler support with GNAT Professional.
>Thus the issue does not arrive in those environments.

However if you are a tiny company with 1-5 employees and starting up it
would be difficult to afford an expensive support which you probably do
not need. However, there is one solution and that is to make the program or
interface GPL while the data it uses is non-GPL. Scientific programs
usually don't costs so much, but as you start buying database to do
calculations the costs increase rapidly. Another way is to ditch Ada and
use Java. I fear the last is the most probable... :-(