Igor, Just wanted to comment on your posting, especially the line reading "...to charge big bucks [$19.95=bigbuck??] for something that uses GCC is, IMHO, very naughty". <rant> GNU/GCC clearly has something to do with free software. But free has nothing to do with free as in gratis/no money etc. Free Software has to do with the freedom to share. (Read more on the topic under the section "Free as in freedom" on the Free Software Foundations home pages: <URL http://www.fsf.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html>. Note the line: "You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee".) This means that you _can_ distribute free software like gcc and still charge for it! I've been to one of Richard M. Stallmans talks, and although I don't share all his views on how to share code, I agree with the following part of his philosophy; if I enhance or in some other way add value to free software, people might like to pay me for that (look at what companies like RedHat are doing with its GNU/Linux distribution, its not all about support), as long as I pass the freedom on to my fellow programmers (or hackers, as RMS puts it). The problem in MobileLab's case (and Falch.net's too of course), is that we are "breaking" the part with passing the freedom on to our fellow programmers. You can't download or use or even see to the source-code of our programs. This is not a violation of the GPL-license, since these products are only _using_ gcc. When you buy one of these products, you don't buy gcc, but you buy a development environment that eases the use of gcc (a part of this is to make distribution and installation of gcc as simple as possible). The main reason for this is that developing and supporting good development environments is not exatcly free/gratis (etc.). It's really expensive. We tried to give away our development tools for free (for non-commercial use) a while ago, resulting in a strange increase in people doing things for free, bugging us with questions and queries about all sorts of things (like how to "compile this visual basic code into c++" etc.). (ok, we didn't give away the source-code, but I don't think that would have changed the situation too much) To compensate for this, Falch.net is employing a developer (who you all might know) with the sole responsibility of developing/enhancing/maintaining the prc-tools project. This means that from the money we make on selling commercial software (our development environments), we are paying for the work on a project that would benefit the whole development community because its free (free to be shared, actually GPL'ed). Then you can choose too download prc-tools for free, or buy products like our development environments. Now you know what you are paying for. If you have any other ideas for making business from free software for small companies without millions of dollars in the bank, please let me know (by email :-) </rant> Happy hacking! (sorry if you get two copies of this message, I had some problems posting the first one) -- Christian <http://www.falch.net> "Igor Mozolevsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:59299@palm-dev-forum... > > > > --On 08 August 2001 13:43 -0700 Huy T Phan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hello everyone, > > > > Does anybody know any reviews (formal or otherwise) on the > > mobileStudio C++? > > I don't know about reviews, and indeed it could be very good, but to charge > big bucks for something that uses GCC is, IMHO, very naughty. Yes, I do > know that there is a promotional offer on, and, yes, I am tempted by that, > and yes, I know that you pay mostly for support :-p > > IM :-) > > -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/support/forums/
