Re: Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board?

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

"Juha Valimaki" <juha.valimaki@xdsloy.com> wrote in message news:<ak4vaj$5g6$1@phys-news1.kolumbus.fi>...

> Yes, I agree with you. It's just shame that sometimes all users don't fit in
> the same business model. The two bad things I see in ACT business model is
> that (1) it makes it hard for other companies to offer cheap, but not free,
> Ada tools

No one ever succeeded at doing this who tried in the past, and the
attempts
at this all failed when there *WAS* no freely available version of
Ada. Perhaps it is because there is no mass market for Ada, perhaps it
is because
the people who tried before did it wrong. As to whether the
availability of
freely downloadable Ada systems helps or hurts, it is not at all
clear. We
think that it very much helps all segments of the Ada market to have a
high
quality Ada compiler that students, hobbyists, and indidual
enthusiastic
engineers can access. 

> and (2) it discriminates small development teams.

What an odd word to use. We don't discriminate against anyone, we
simply don't
serve all segments of the market. We succeed because we don't try to
be all
things to all people. Of course all users don't fit in the same
business model!
What get's companies in trouble is when they try to serve multiple
markets at
the same time and the markets get mixed up (consider the airlines
trying to
sell expensive seats to businesses and the same exact seats cheap to
tourists).

If there is a viable business in providing low cost products to small
development teams, then someone should by all means step in, but
please
don't expect Ada Core Technologies to serve all needs of the Ada
community.
We can't and we won't try.

We are Ada enthusiasts, and we immodestly believe that the continued
viability
of Ada Core Technologies, now with a complement of over 30 highly
experienced
engineers dedicated to the continued support and improvement of Ada,
is critical to the continued success of Ada.

We are thus very conservative in how we approach the market, and so
far this
conservative approach has paid off with steady (but modest and
manageable)
growth, through a period in which other less conservative high-tech
companies
have seen a huge boom-and-bust cycle.

We have increased revenues in the last year, and we have a comfortable
but
modest buffer in our bank account. We don't have zillions in stock
options,
and I am sorry to report that the CEO and other founders have not been
able
to cash out for millions of dollars, no doubt making us a failure in
the eyes
of some, but we are quite happy (and proud) to be succeeding in our
own style!

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies