Hulatt, Jon wrote:
> A possible example of how this could work would be if the Compiler was
> GPL'ed, but the linker was proprietary.

It's not.  The compiler, assembler, and linker are all based on GNU code.

> Then you would have to spend
> your $800 on a license for the linker.

I don't see a problem here nor anything terribly unreasonable.  Hobbyists
can get the source, and with a little work build the tools for free.
Commercial customers can pay $800 and get something that works right out of
the box without any farting around.  If one of our software engineers needed
a compiler that they could create from the source code or buy ready to go
for $400 (we get a discount on Microchip tools) it would be a no-brainer to
buy it.  I want them getting work done and generating billable hours instead
of wasting time getting a "free" product to work.

In the end I suspect some hobbyist will do the work to create a ready to go
installation package for these tools and make it available for free
download.  Some will continue to buy the Microchip product because they
don't know about or don't trust the free version.  It will however reduce
the Microchip sales, maybe eventually causing them to give up and make it
available for free.  Only time will tell.


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