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>> It has never had a compiler / IDE that made it easy to write Windows or Mac applications.

Are you talking about the Eighties? GNAT is available for free since the nineties and the GPS IDE is available for free on all relevant platforms since nearly twenty years; even before there were IDE like alternatives for free.

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The free part is confusing as it is GPL'd and I don't understand what the runtime exceptions mean. It's confusing to me where the boundaries are and when I would have to switch to the commercial version (and get a quote) to make paid and closed source software instead of using the community language. Ada is great, but I'll never use it past hobby status under these conditions.

The FSF GNAT version, in contrast to the AdaCore GNAT version, comes with the RLE (see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-3.1.de.html). This means that the code generated from closed-source Ada applications may be linked with the runtime library included with FSF GNAT without GPL violation. With the runtime library included with the AdaCore GNAT this is not true. So in practice you have to use FSF GNAT for closed-source applications unless you're willing to pay for the AdaCore GNAT. This is mainly an issue if you need to compile for a processor architecture for which there is no FSF runtime library.

Thank you! Is the FSF GNAT version ancient or pretty close to the Adacore version in terms of updates?

I'm not up to date. Last time I checked (about five years ago) the FSF GNAT was about a year behind AdaCore GPL GNAT. Maybe someone else has more recent information.

At least as of a year or two ago, AdaCore seemed to be putting in more effort to shore up the differences between FSF and GPL GNAT.

Do you have evidence/references of this?

After all, FSF GNAT was already compatible with Ada 2012 at that time. And a company that makes large investments in software using Ada undoubtedly needs support and will not shy away from the comparatively low additional costs for licenses and maintenance contracts in its own interest. But it is important that the technology is absolutely free for small companies and people who are simply interested in the technology.

Nothing concrete I can point you to offhand. An AdaCore employee popped up in the community (freenode #ada, probably comp.lang.ada too) and started talking about it. I know several people pointed him to differences that were later addressed, or he had already tackled.

What abour Spark?

SPARK is a model checker for a subset of Ada. In contrast to the GNAT runtime library there is no need to deploy anything related to SPARK when you use it. As long as you don't deploy GPL software there is no issue with closed-source applications. Just use the GPL version of GNAT and SPARK to build and check your application.

Besides the licensing confusion 7thaccount mentions, the GPS IDE is only free for "open source GPL software"[1]. Otherwise its everybody's favorite "Request Pricing - Help us understand your development needs and get your pricing information or an evaluation".

This sucked for Smalltalk, and it sucks for Ada. I stand by my statement there was no equivalent to the Turbo family for Ada. The Ada space isn't very different than the Smalltalk although I think the Ada story might be worse. Damn shame for such a nice programming language.

1) https://www.adacore.com/community >> https://www.adacore.com/gnatpro/comparison

> the GPS IDE is only free for "open source GPL software"[1]

That's very academic. The GPS is available under GPL (see https://github.com/AdaCore/gps). As long as you don't deploy GPS or link your app with it you can use it for closed-source apps as you like; it's definitely no GPL violation.

> This sucked for Smalltalk

Not sure why you compare it to Smalltalk; but for the latter you can use Squeak for free (under MIT or Apache license) since the nineties and today even a couple of other powerful Smalltalk implementations such as Pharo.

That's very academic.

No, if small commercial developers cannot use the language without paying massive fees, you might as well forget any popularity. Heck, you couldn't even use Ada for non-GPL open source programs.

Not sure why you compare it to Smalltalk

Because Smalltalk vendors have a long history of doing the same pricing that made it impractical to impossible for the little guy to use the language. There have been several threads on HN about this.

> No, if small commercial developers cannot use the language without paying massive fees, you might as well forget any popularity

Have you read my answer? There is no reason why you couldn't use FSF GNAT or GPS in closed-source projects.

> Heck, you couldn't even use Ada for non-GPL open source programs.

Why not? The GPL GNAT with RLE allows you to use any licence with your application, whether closed or open-source.

> Because Smalltalk vendors have a long history of doing the same pricing that made it impractical to impossible for the little guy to use the language.

There were always free ST versions as far as I can remember. The "little guy" could e.g. use "Little Smalltalk" by Budd which appeared before 1987.

First the last, There were always free ST versions as far as I can remember. The "little guy" could e.g. use "Little Smalltalk" by Budd which appeared before 1987.

No one could write a commercial program with Little Smalltalk. Love the book, but the implementation is not going to work. Heck, Squeak could not do a program that looked anything like a real Windows or Mac program.

Maybe we're talking past each other but the IDE says the community edition is only authorized for GPL software, every other edition is big bucks. https://www.adacore.com/gnatpro/comparison

Well, if you were willing to spend 60$ you could buy a Smalltalk package suited for commercial applications which looked somehow like Windows. But that's not the topic here anyway.

> Maybe we're talking past each other but the IDE says the community edition is only authorized for GPL software, every other edition is big bucks.

Do not let this mislead you. The software is available under GPL. That is all you need to know. And GPL allows you to use the software for any purpose. Maybe I should mention that I studied law for two years and then had one more year of lectures in patent and license contract law (see my profile for more information).

Ok, no. Look at the GPL interaction with App Stores. GPL has been debated on HN forever.

> There is no reason why you couldn't use FSF GNAT or GPS in closed-source projects.

But there is Fear Uncertainty & Doubt.

Although we have the Enlightenment behind us, there is still superstition. There is nothing I can do about that.

You inform those who are open to being better informed.

March 7, 1988 — "Smalltalk/V 286 is available now and costs $199.95, the company said. Registered users of Digitalk's Smalltalk/V can upgrade for $75 until June 1."

https://books.google.com/books?id=CD8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA25&ots=...

which quickly became Visual Smalltalk Enterprise, which you can ask various companies about how that went commercially.

Factually, October 22 1989 — "… an OS/2 version of the Smalltalk language, Smalltalk V/PM … The $500 product is designed to cut the time it takes to prototype user-interface-intensive applications for Presentation Manager."

https://www.cbronline.com/news/digitalk_has_first_compiled_v...

OS/2 didn't move the needle for anyone. Smalltalk V evolved into an unsupported, expensive Smalltalk. Smalltalk never had its Turbo moment.