Re: Government Policy on Ada Acquisitions

[kdh@ocsystems.com (Kevin D. Heatwole)]

Jim Dorman (aetechca@powergrid.electriciti.com ) writes:
> 
> The way to ruin a budding commercial enterprise is for the 
> government to PAY NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS TO DEVELOP THINGS AND 
> THEN GIVE THEM AWAY. For the benefit of those in academia, this is 
> how things are actually working. The problem with this approach is 
> that it ruins the incentive of industry  to compete. Why should 
> Alsys, AETECH or RRS commit $900K to develop and maintain a 
> validated $99 Ada9X compiler for academia, when the government 
> issues a non-competitive sole-source contract to NYU for $2.5 
> million dollars to build a non-validated GNAT compiler from 
> scratch to be given away free? 
> 

Being an employee of one of the "budding commercial enterprises" in 
the Ada industry, I, too, share Jim's concerns (I'd like to remain
employed ;-)).  The costs of competing in this environment are very 
high (you need a minimum of at least $1 million a year in on-going 
revenue if you are even going to think about supporting an Ada 
compiler).  That being said, I am still confident in our ability to 
compete with any "cheap" compiler, even if it is "of high quality", 
but it does make you think twice before entering the game.

Regardless, I think it is good to have a discussion on the effects 
on the existing Ada compiler vendors (there are fewer and fewer these
days) of a potentially "commercially viable" compiler built with 
public money.

One solution might have been to build into the GNAT contract with
the government, the restriction that GNAT could not be validated for
a specified period (say, until the year 2000), even by an independent 
commercial enterprise.  This would slow the introduction of free
compilers into the government for "real" projects (where commercial 
Ada vendors currently derive much of their revenue), but not prevent
the government from using it in places where "validated" compilers are
required.  It is in the best long term interest of the government to 
have a thriving Ada market.  Also, the validation status of an Ada 
compiler in the commercial market place (non-US government) is of 
little concern to commercial users, so GNAT/Ada would succeed/fail on 
its own merits.

Anyway, this is just my opinion.  I only speak for myself and do not
speak for my employer.

Kevin D. Heatwole
OC Systems, Inc.