ObjectSpace DXML No Longer Free?

pointym5 asks: "ObjectSpace, home of many well-respected software packages for Java (Voyager, JGL, DXML), has had a much appreciated tradition of providing most tools free for development and even non-redistribution commercial use. While some tools still are distributed that way (for now), the DXML product seems to have been yanked from the "free" list onto the "pay $$$" list. By way of introduction: DXML is a tool that translates an XML DTD into a set of Java classes. There are other tools like it, but this one operated in a way I felt to be most programmer-friendly. In addition, the tool made it possible to leverage the work it did in parsing the DTD so that at run time one could access the meta-data and do wonderful magical things." While I'm sad to see another piece of quality software removed from the ranks, the code belongs to ObjectSpace and is licenced how they wish, though I would be interested in knowing if there were any overriding (non-profit margin related) reasons to this decision.

"While up until a few weeks or months ago one could download DXML from the ObjectSpace Web site (including source and docs), the old download URL is now a dead link and the product can now only be found as part of their "Voyager Pro" kit. They don't have any links to documentation of the old versions, nor can I find any sort of "News" items about the decision to change the distribution mode. Weirdest of all, when I tried to send mail to the old "[e-mail]" mailing list I get errors that suggest the list itself has been pulled.

So I have two questions, one general and one directly personal:

• What do people think about the practise of offering software "free" for a period of time (say, just long enough to debug it ...) and then pulling it back into the for-money product line? Clearly it's theirs to do with as they wish, but isn't it at least inconsiderate?
• Does anybody have a copy of DXML 1.1 or 1.2 stashed away? :-)

"

Yeah.. Well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than 'free as in herpes'.

Write your own

[dingbat_hp]

If you switch from DTDs to Schemas, then writing a similar tool becomes almost trivial, as an XSLT stylesheet. I use my own, tweaking it to suit the job in hand.

As a Schema is itself an XML document, unlike a DTD, it opens up all sorts of fun extensions to it like this. I haven't used DTDs in over a year, and I certainly don't miss them.

At JavaOne, Sun were also showing a similar product called "Adelard"

no surprise...

[eMBee]

that's why you should insist on good open source licenses.

if you want to be sure to be able to use a product continously, then make sure it has a proper open source license that allows you to fork.

so if you can't continue to work with the version you have, and don't want to buy their new version, then forget it, find something else and move on...

greetings, eMBee.
--

Re:no surprise...

[mckennabluedot.com]

ObjectSpace has done this same thing before. Voyager started out being totally free for anything and then suddenly one day it was no longer free for commercial use. The first time I wrote it off as an honest change in business strategy because, hey they realized they needed to make money and that was a way to do it. Now that they've done the same thing again, one must conclude it is their standard practice to run a bait and switch.