BeOpen 2.0 vs ActiveState?

[Tim Peters]

[Paul Prescod, Coporate Apologist <wink>]
> If we couldn't justify the development and maintenance cost of
> ActivePython in these two ways then we couldn't continue to
> develop it!

[Tim Hammerquist]
> And yet Python and Perl were both created and developed for years
> without license restrictions.  Why does it cost so much more for your
> company to slap its name on someone else's creation than it does for
> someone to develop it from scratch in the first place?

I'd say it's the obvious reason:  ActiveState is paying salaries here, while
Guido and Larry Wall did not; i.e., something is much more expensive than
nothing.  It's not that ActiveState merely "slaps its name" on Python,
either:  at least their Windows installer is much slicker than the one I
maintain for PythonLabs (which latter is still using a creaky old version of
the Wise installer developed for Windows 3.1!); they're funding Komodo
development (which may or may not prove slick enough to get Guido to give up
on IDLE); AS's Trent Mick did virtually all of the exceedingly irritating
work to port Python to Win64 (and contributed it back to the core); and so
on.  The kinds of work they're doing aren't being done for free by anyone.

> I apologize to the group for this post.  It is a personal objection to
> ActiveState's business practices, etc., and has no place in
> comp.lang.python.

Actually, it's more on-topic than the threads I usually jump into <wink>.
PythonLabs will continue to ship core Python free of encumbrance or charge.
But as more specialized markets demand more tailoring to their unique needs,
volunteers become scarcer, and the few of us who do get paid to work on the
core now are spread too thin already anyway.  ActiveState apparently sees a
market opportunity in the gaps PythonLabs (along with all the SourceForge
volunteers) necessarily leave unfilled -- if they can succeed at that, more
power to them!

I personally use the straight PythonLabs release.  But then I'm not a
businessman in Topeka looking for ecommerce-in-a-box either.

food-doesn't-grow-on-trees<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim