Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

"John R. Strohm" wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, did the Xerox executives in question give any kind of
> explanation WHY they outlawed Ada?

As nearly as anyone could determine, they had no reason other than that they
decided to standardize on C.

> One would think that, if the project manager did a decent job of detailing
> the actual cost and schedule savings on the Ada project, that it would get
> the attention of the beancounters.

The project manager was giving a lot of success story seminars at conferences,
especially Tri-Ada conferences.    However, his was the only development
group that had enjoyed success with Ada.   Everyone else was using other
languages, including, if I recall correctly, Mesa.

It looks, from the outside, like another example of the kind of stupidity about
computing once typical of  people at the executive level of Xerox.  It is hard
to know if they have gotten any better.   They certainly never learned any
lessons from PARC -- although the rest of the world did.

Richard Riehle