Re: Development process in the Ada community

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

tmoran@acm.org wrote in message news:<Itiw8.3027$Wl4.1626920993@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com>...
> and considering the "give
> it away for free, charge a bundle for support" model for 
> GPL product funding.  That model requires that you do 
> support only for cash

Well perhaps some software is sold on that model, I am not
sure what but that's certainly not the Ada Core Technologies model. We
provide licensed copyrighted software bundled with support (a not
unusual model).
Yes, there are some public versions of GNAT, but
they are, from the point of view of our customer base,
quite different.

(warning remember that I have a definite interest in the
success of ACT, so read the following with that in mind,
just as you need to remember that Tom Moran is involved
in commercial products that are to some extent competitive
with ACT, and which have a very different model).

If a customer gets GNAT Pro, they are getting a software
product that is fully backed by our company. They know that
it has been extensively tested, They know that it is properly licensed
(a real concern for many users, since
you never really know the license situation of stuff you
download from miscellaneous places). They know that ACT
will stand behind the product, and they know that ACT
support is unusual in that they have immediate access to
our entire engineering staff, for help not only with problems with
GNAT Pro, but general problems and questions in the use of Ada and
bring their projects to a successful
conclusion. 

Ada Core Technologies is definitely not in the business
of giving things away!

> ignoring any latent feelings of obligation to stand
> behind your programming.

We definitely stand behind GNAT Pro, and will make sure
that users of GNAT Pro are successful in their use of this
product.

From time to time we make public binaries available, and
we make the sources available at gnu.org, and we do this
because we think it is generally advantageous to the Ada
community, but this is done on the basis that there is
no support from us. If people find that worrisome, they
should stay away from unsupported software, but for students and
hobbyists and academic researchers, it is
often quite acceptable to use unsupported software, and
we hope that the public versions of GNAT will be helpful.

What some people seem to be saying is "Hey you shouldn't
make this stuff public, unless you are willing to stand
behind it and support it!" Well that's not the way the
world works. There is no free lunch here. If some philanthropist wants
to make a significant donation to
support the binary version, then that would change things.
So if we really thought people agreed with this quote, we
would have to react by simply not making it available (remember that
the GPL never forces ACT or anyone else
to distribute anything). That would be too bad, and in
fact we know perfectly well that the great majority of
users of the public version understand the situation
exactly. Indeed, the criticisms often come from competitors who
definitely do NOT make their software available, so you
have to wonder :-)

> > The GPL is merely a software license that gives users 
> > of your software
> > more rights ...
>   Different, not More.  A set of rights is not o
> one-dimensional with an
> obvious ordering.

I disagree in this case, my specific comparison was with
the Microsoft license, and it is clear that the GPL and GMGPL as used
by Ada Core Technologies gives you absolutely *ALL* the rights you get
from Microsoft, plus a whole lot more. Indeed I would be very
surprised to see any license
from any seller of proprietary software that was not
a subset of the rights you have with GNAT Pro.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies