[clean-list] Will Clean remain freeware?

[Eddy Van Esch]

Hi all,

I am not a professional programmer. I write programs for my own use,
usually some software tool I can use. And I also program just for fun.

I used to program in assembler (microcontrollers), Pascal, Lisp and
various BASIC dialects. I practically always used freeware software
because I don't write commercial programs so the stuff I write doesn't
bring me any money. And so I don't want to spend too much money on
programming languages and tools.

But the disadvantage of freeware compilers is that you often see that the
development or support is stopped for some reason. Usually because the
development was in the hands of a single person and he can't bring up the
time or effort or simply because he has other things to do.

I have experienced this a few times.

Therefore I was looking for a freeware language with a solid base for
future support and I found ... Clean..:-)

So, at the moment I'm studying Clean and I must say that I like it,
although the concept and the syntax is much different from the languages
I have used before.

One thing crossed my mind and that is: <underline>will Clean remain
freeware for non-commercial users</underline>? Since I don't want to walk
in the same 'trap', that is, spending a lot of time to learn a language
only to find out that at some point I am obligated to BUY the software
because the freeware status is lifted..

I'm well aware that this question could be hard to answer because nobody
can look in the future, but maybe the people of the University of
Nijmegen have a better view on the future of Clean?


Kind regards 

Eddy