in reply to Re^5: Getting Fed Up with ActiveState
in thread Getting Fed Up with ActiveState

So, unless AS produced two distributions, one with and one without, these corporates and government departments alike, would cease distributing Perl to workstations

Ok ... I've now a better appreciation of where you're coming from. The smart thing for AS to do (assuming they can legally do this) is to therefore provide the two distributions, as you suggest. Those corporates/government bodies that freaked on distributing the compiler would simply distribute the non-compiler version. No problem for them ... and no problem for AS (that a little extra disk space won't fix).

Cheers,
Rob

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Re^7: Getting Fed Up with ActiveState
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Dec 02, 2006 at 13:08 UTC
    ... and no problem for AS (that a little extra disk space won't fix).

    That's far from the end of it. AS make their living by providing paid support for their distributions. What this would amount to is adding a completely new product line to their inventory, and for a small company, that's a distinctly non-trivial exercise.

    They first need to ensure that they can support a GNU(?) licenced product?

    • Can they legally re-distribute it?
    • How does it affect their existing licencing agreements?
    • Is there any conflict between the licencing of GCC and the licencing of the other parts of the distribution?
    • Do they have the skills in house to support such an animal?
    • Strawberry Perl has a list of unresolved issues. If AS distributed a similar product, they would have to resolve those issues first. Especially if they are to expect to earn revenue from it by supporting it.
    • ... ? (IANAL. Maybe some of these are non-issues. But I bet there is a lot more that my 30 seconds of thought haven't covered.)

    Disk space is really the last consideration here.

    Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
    Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
    "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
    In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]
      Can they legally re-distribute it?
      How does it affect their existing licencing agreements?
      Is there any conflict between the licencing of GCC and the licencing of the other parts of the distribution?

      Sheesh ... you've gone and lost me again :-)

      Aren't those precisely the issues that adamk was raising ? (Is it just me, or have we come full circle ?)

      Cheers,
      Rob
[reply]

        Um. Sorry, yes they are same issues, though seen from a slightly different perspective. That of commerce is not a crime, and neither is making a living.

        But the issues do go further than just the legal ones. Supporting two produces in place of one creates far more than double the problems. There are issues of interoperability. What happens if someone installs both?

        I've found it a problem to run two concurrent versions of AS built with the same compiler. The core of those issues is that a perl58.dll is produced by all 5.8.x versions which I think is done for binary compatibility reasons, but seems to cause as many conflicts as it solves.

        Without pretending to understand all the issues involved, they're easier to avoid than research, why not perl5.8.x.dll?

        Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
        Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
        "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
        In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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