Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

[Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>]

rleif wrote:
> This is the typical argument for GPL, which I totally reject.

I don't understand. What is it that you are rejecting? Is it the
right of a developer to decide how his work should be licensed?
No one is forced to release their software under the GPL.

 > 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.

They made the fruits of their labor available to be used in such a
way, willingly. While you are making these claims of fraud, how many
of the GPLing developers have complained? How many developers are
making money on software development except as employees or contractors
producing work for hire?

> What you have described is George Orwell's Animal Farm. "Some of us
 > are more equal than others."

I'll say. The members of the committee are doing all the work, while
having to listen to unhelpful and carping suggestions from people who
want the results of the labor without contributing to it.

> the exploitive economics of the Free Software Foundation.

No one is chained to his keyboard. Anyone who dislikes the consequences
of the GPL is perfectly free not to incorporate GPLed software into his
own work, and not to release his own work under the GPL.

> In short, one should work for one's own benefit and not to benefit IBM,
 > RedHat, and others.

Under such a policy, all potential users and distributors are forced to
contend with licensing issues and compliance. This is an enormous added
burden over dealing with free software. So such software won't go into
wide release, especially when hundreds of packages must be considered.
In order to be "working for one's own benefit" you are placing the burden
of license compliance on distributors and users, in effect forcing them
to work for your benefit as well.

So you are free to work for your own benefit, but then you mustn't feel
slighted when the big distributors choose to ignore you. Part of creating
a successful business is marketing, distribution, and support and if you
want to work for your own benefit, you must expect to do these things
yourself and not gain the benefits of wide distribution that being a part
of RedHat gets you.

> 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. People or companies who can't afford
to pay can try to devlop local expertise, or read books, or use newsgroups
for their support, but they can use the software immediately and for free.

> 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.

And yet they had the incentive to productize and support GPS, and still
chose to use the GPL. ACT deals with Ada customers every day; if they
don't feel that A# is worth supporting, they are more likely to be right
than you are.

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.

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.