Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.uucp (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ pricing for AT&T Release 2.0, and 386 binaries
Message-ID: <576@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 19 Jul 89 19:03:51 GMT
References: <1379@hcr.UUCP>
Sender: news@aiai.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.uucp (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 52

In article <1379@hcr.UUCP> mike@hcr.UUCP (Mike Tilson) writes:
>[see below]

While you've made a number of valid points, I don't agree with
everything you said.  In particular:

>3.  There is no good way to license a network.
>This is true.  You have to buy a license for each machine you wish to
>use the software on.  I'm not sure this is such a big problem.  Nobody
>seems surprised that you have to pay to buy each machine on the
>network, but somehow buying the software seems to be a big problem.
>I think often the complaint boils down to "I wish it were cheaper/free."

If you want to see it that way, perhaps it does.  But one might also
note that while one must buy two cpus to have tow cpus, one does not
have to buy two copies of some software in order to run it on two cpus
at once.  So software is significantly different from machines in this
respect.

>5.  "The price is too high, let's all get behind FSF GNU G++, except
>    it's not practical for me to do this...."
>The ultimate low cost option is to get your software "for free."  So
>why does anyone ever buy a C++ compiler, when they could have G++?
>(RMS says "good question!" at this point. :-))  The answer is that
>nothing is really free.  I am aware of a case where a local firm
>paid thousands of dollars to a consultant in order to get FSF
>compilers up and running on a common workstation.  Since this firm
>has no compiler gurus, if they ever want an upgrade or if their
>base OS changes, etc., they'll probably pay the price again [...]

Well, that's just one case.  It happens that g++ runs just fine
on the workstations I use without any extra effort on our part.
And it seems at least as likely that this will continue to be
so in the future as it does that certain commercial products
will survive into the same future.

Not only that, getting commercial software fixed is often very
difficult.  G++ is not necessarily worse in this respect.

>(I'll note in passing that FSF seems to have released only
>packages that are clones -- albeit good quality value-added clones --
>of existing already successful products, and with the exception of
>emacs everything being cloned is the result of development and marketing
>efforts carried on by profit-making, software-selling organizations.

Actually, it is not the case that everything available from FSF
is a clone of some commercial product.

Not only that.  Many commercial products are "clones", and sometimes
of software originally produced by Universities.

>Perhaps this should tell us something.