[Info-vax] Ada on VMS, was: Re: Free Pascal for VMS ?

[Dave Froble]

On 5/13/2018 12:14 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 5/12/2018 10:57 PM, Paul Sture wrote:
>> On 2018-05-12, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>>> Anybody here fancy volunteering a couple of years' effort to write an
>>> Ada compiler for free for these folks?   Nah?  Okay. Didn't think so.
>>>   And for those that might be interested in offering this or another
>>> compiler commercially, they'll all be pondering whether the various
>>> potential customers are likely to pay enough to sustain the work and
>>> offset the development costs and preferably with a profit, or are the
>>> potential customers more likely to do little or nothing, or to port to
>>> some to other platform that has an existing Ada compiler?
>>
>>  From a comment to one of The Register's articles, last July:
>>
>> <https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2017/06/28/elementaryos_ubuntu_unity_replacement/#c_3219968>
>>
>>
>>      "Well as the author of a very popular open source file system I
>>      fully concur with that attitude. People and companies just won't pay
>>      and will bend over backwards not to pay,
>>
>>      I have not received anything for the open source I wrote for the
>>      last 8 years. Nothing unless you count possibly 3 or 4 donations of
>>      less than $25 in 8 years.
>>
>>      This is for a file system you will almost definitely have in a
>>      product and/or use indirectly when you use internet services (as it
>>      is used as a container file system in cloud).
>>
>>      That's millions of installations. Bitter? You bet. I stopped
>>      developing it in 2014.
>>
>>      Only recently I got approached by a major silicon valley internet
>>      company (revenue in billions of dollars) who wanted some advice. As
>>      usual they expressed "astonishment" when I refused to give it for
>>      nothing.
>>
>>      You're all freetards."
>
> Hmmmm.
>
> He chose to release some code as open source.
>
> Very few people chose to donate money to him.
>
> He chose not to offer support for free.
>
> He chose to stop working on the open source code.
>
> I am not sure that I see the problem.
>
> He made his choices.
>
> Was he mislead in any way?
>
> Arne
>

Well, yes, sort of.

The entire concept of "free open source" is a problem.

TANSTAAFL

Writing code is work.  Work is usually something one does for some form 
of compensation.  Don't see too many people with a job where they do not 
get paid.  (Well, unless you're a prisoner in a Chinese prison.)

Those who buy into the concept of free software have made a mistake. 
One could claim that they were "mislead".

Yes, there is free software that some people have been paid to produce. 
By someone like IBM, in order to sell HW.