From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.8 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_50,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 X-Received: by 2002:ac8:458a:: with SMTP id l10mr19196899qtn.345.1596500640611; Mon, 03 Aug 2020 17:24:00 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:ac8:7297:: with SMTP id v23mr4810952qto.154.1596500640385; Mon, 03 Aug 2020 17:24:00 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.gegeweb.eu!gegeweb.org!usenet-fr.net!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!209.85.160.216.MISMATCH!news-out.google.com!nntp.google.com!postnews.google.com!google-groups.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2020 17:23:59 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: google-groups.googlegroups.com; posting-host=47.185.220.67; posting-account=zwxLlwoAAAChLBU7oraRzNDnqQYkYbpo NNTP-Posting-Host: 47.185.220.67 References: <67b6ddf7-0009-4c34-ba67-90219fa1057eo@googlegroups.com> <9b2d3201-5cb3-46b6-97c2-8d5fb2baae4fo@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Is there another ada compiler From: Andreas ZEURCHER Injection-Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2020 00:24:00 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: reader01.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:59655 List-Id: On Monday, August 3, 2020 at 10:18:39 AM UTC-5, nobody in particular wrote: > We should note, GNAT / Adacore were created on the backs of American=20 > taxpayers via a grant to New York University. Unfortunately, the=20 > taxpayers got the shaft and a profitable business was born to continue=20 > the fun. Well, I am not usually in the habit of saying nice things about GNAT, but l= et us compare FSF's GCC GNAT with FSF's GCC CHILL. Ada and CHILL are fierc= e competitor languages: one from NATO military and the other from ITU-T te= lecom, where Ada trended a little more toward Wirth family of languages as = inspiration whereas CHILL trended a little more toward PL/I as inspiration.= Both languages had a 2-decade mandate to be utilized in their respective = industrial sectors, but each's mandate had evaporated by the latter half of= the 1990s. Ada had AdaCore arise through several mergers as the for-profit support com= pany for open-source software, analogous to Cygnus Solutions during the 199= 0s, and its acquirer RedHat until this day. CHILL had a different business= model entirely. CHILL compilers were produced by the telecom companies th= at were self-mandated to use CHILL. If Ada had that business model, Raythe= on would have authored its own compiler, Lockheed-Martin would have authore= d its own compiler, Boeing would have authored its own compiler, Airbus wou= ld have authored its own compiler, and so forth. Eventually the telecom co= mpanies in Europe fatigued of the effort needed to write a compiler for an = evolving language standard (ITU-T Z.200 and ISO 9496), so 2 of them (Alcate= l or Siemens, IIRC) outsourced their internal compiler development to Per B= othner, who eventually landed at Cygnus Solutions, after University of Wisc= onsin at Madison (years after Randy). Eventually, Cygnus Solutions convinc= ed FSF to allow their CHILL compiler into GCC. Shortly after FSF GCC admitted CHILL into its compiler suite, RedHat bought= Cygnus Solutions and nearly all of the European telecom companies were fin= alizing the financially painful governmental reform where PTTs (postal-tele= phone-telegraph agencies of governments) were divesting their relationship = with the equipment manufacturers=E2=80=94much like AT&T divested WesternEle= ctric/Lucent and Bell Canada no longer had Northern Telecom as favorite-son= supplier during much the same 1990s time period. Long story short, when F= SF pleaded for someone anyone to update GCC CHILL to GCC 3.X internals, no = one stepped forward to fund the effort with money, and most especially no o= ne donated source code as in-kind support. GCC CHILL as donorware ended as= of GCC 2.95. Whatever or however one might critique FSF GNAT versus AdaCore GNAT Pro dif= ferences or delays or never achieving perfect congruence among any pairwise= matching of any of their releases, GNAT's viability to continue maintenanc= e & evolution is far better that CHILL's donorware-based approach that fail= ed miserably under the same FSF GCC umbrella during the same time period. = So matters could be far far worse than they are.