[antlr-interest] ANTLR Studio license issues

[Prashant Deva]

1.)  Why isnt ANTLR Studio GPLed?

Some people are saying that there is nothing in GPL that does not
allow you to charge for your product.

Yes, that is true, but it also says that you gotta distribute the
source along for free.

Now even a bonehead can conclude that if you can get the source code
for free then you would rather just download it and compile it
yourself than pay for the software. after all it takes only a minute
to compile. So NO, get this clear, if your software is GPLd , it
CANNOT be sold. Especially one like an IDE.

That said some parts of ANTLR Studio do come under the Sun Public
License and source will be provided with them. Specifically the
AntlrStudio.Lexer_1.0.0.jar distributed with the beta is under SPL.
You can download the source even now from netbeans site.

2.) Why dont i give the IDE for free and charge for services? Doesnt
redhat use the same business model?

There is a difference between providing support for an IDE and
providing it for and Operating System.
Also AS has from the begining been designed such that you can
instantly start using it ful fledged without reading any manuals or
requiring any support. If you watch the videos you will see it says -
Time to learn ANTLR Studio - 0 minutes.

So if you have used Eclipse before you should get started with using
AS right away. There is nothing new to learn. No new keyboard
shortcuts, etc. You dont need to modify your code for use with the
debugger. Hell, you dont even need to press Ctrl+Space to auto
complete!

All the people who have got the beta version have been able to use
without requiring any help from me ( aside from the bugs they
encountered).

3.) Somebody said something like giving the software away with GPL
allows the small guy to gain advantage in the market.

I will correct you on this. Yes, it does so, but only when the the
small guy is competing in a *large* market. The market for language
tools is small, very small and i wont be surpised if ANTLR Studio soon
becomes the leaading tool in the market.

4.) Some guys are saying that ANTLR should have been GPLed so that all
tools for it would be GPL and that i am *selling* the work of Terence!

This really is the craziest message i have got. NO, I am NOT selling
Terence's work! ANTLR is still free and can be downloaded free of cost
from antlr.org. ANTLR Studio has been designed from the ground up by
me and me alone.

The reason why ANTLR is not GPL is cause then every program that uses
it would need to be GPLed and Terence certainly doesnt want that.

I had a talk with Terence regarding ANTLR Studio going commercial and
he told me that he was perfectly fine with it.

PRASHANT