Rowley Associates has a lot of cross development tools for different microcontrollers, including the MAKE Controller, as well as many others. They have board support packages that you download and install for specific boards. These tools are all available for Linux too!
They have a personal license which is significantly less expensive ($149.00 to $195.00, depending on the product) than their commercial and educational licenses. I don’t care for one of the provisions of the personal license that says you can’t only distribute software in executable form. This would seem to prevent one from distributing sources for Open Source software.
Before I would want to purchase any of the Rowley software, I would want to clarify their position on Open Source source code distribution for software created under their Personal Licence. Otherwise, they seem to have some quality tools that can support many different microcontroller boards.
It’s the CrossWorks software I would be interested in, which is the development package for C/C++ and is $149.00 under the Personal Licence. Unfortunately, they don’t have any tools for PICS, so I will continue looking. I am not opposed to purchasing tools if I can get what I need and the pricing is reasonable.
8-Dale