Re: Government Policy on Ada Acquisitions

[CONDIC@PSAVAX.PWFL.COM]

From: Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93
Subject: Re: Government Policy on Ada Acquisitions
Original_To:  PROFS%"SMTP@PWAGPDB"
Original_cc:  CONDIC



On Wed, 7 Sep 1994 19:07:41, Michael Feldman <mfeldman@SEAS.GWU.EDU> wrote:
>
>I have a really wacky, fuzzy-headed academic sort-of idea.
>How 'bout if all the Ada companies who are sitting and bitching about
>the lack of tools, and fighting GNAT at every turn,
>...
>

I couldn't agree more and would like to add that this is
*exactly* the way that C got its start. Remember when ATT was
practically *giving* away UNIX to universities in C source code
along with a C compiler? Didn't that do a lot to make UNIX/C
popular? Eventually (when regulatory problems settled out) ATT
started licensing the technology to just about any computer
company that wanted it and - as I recall - the fees were not so
exhorbitant as to make development from scratch an attractive
proposition.

Now I have no experience with GNAT because nobody has a port for
VAX/VMS yet. (Or is there one, of which I do not know?) Maybe
it's a half-way decent system that needs some polish (value
added) and a support environment (more value added) and some
clever tools (even more value added) That sounds like a way for
someone with some entreprenurial spirit to leverage a large
government investment into a going private concern. (Sort of like
Berkley Unix, XENIX, ULTRIX, etc. etc. etc. All UNIX clones with
value added by some vendor.)

On the other hand, GNAT might very well be a piece of crap that
is too large, too slow, too hard to modify, too costly to bring
to validation, and so on. If that's the case, I could see why
vendors would want to steer clear of it in favor of their own,
ground up development. (This was true of lots of early Ada83
software that was funded by the government.)

But from the noise I hear from this and other nets concerning
GNAT, I don't get the impression that it is a hopeless corpus of
software. It may very well be possible to take GNAT, target it to
a few critical systems (PC, Mac, PowerPC,...) and produce a
commercially viable product for, say, under $200 and get it out
there competing with C/C++ and all the rest.

Anyone out there interested in starting up a venture?


Pax Vobiscum,

Marin

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-93                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   MDCONDIC@AOL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600                  Internet:   4033121@MCIMAIL.COM
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