Re: Software Economics was RE: Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board?

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

"Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1030114442.9877.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...

> The ultimate in unfair
> competition is to make your product available for free.

Well one would have to agree that if someone is making a product free,
subsidizing it from some other income source, that can be unfair
competition.

However, Robert Leif seems to have some completely bizarre view of how
Ada
Core Technologies operates that bares not even a slight resemblance to
reality.

Our product, GNAT Pro, is a high quality Ada compiler tool set, with a
direct
guaranteed licensed status from Ada Core, and with high quality
support, including immediate updates to correct problems, continual
enhancements in
response to customer needs, and special customization to meet the
needs of
customers.

Despite Bob's strange statements, this product is not free. In fact
there are
a fair number of threads on CLA from time to time complaining that we
charge
much too much for this product, and urging us to make some low cost
product
available.

Now this is not something we are about to do, but in fact, we are so
far from
a monopoly that if someone wants to compete with us and make some
other product
based around the GNAT core technology, they are free to do so!

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

I think the confusion is so great, that it is probably impossible to
cure :-)

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies