Re: Profitability of Ada Educational Sales (was: Ada is not a failure.

[cis.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!seas.gwu.edu!mfeld man@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Michael Feldman)]

In article <1993Aug9.145311.25290@sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
 writes:
>
[stuff deleted]

I guess you're getting specific here :-)

>For example, suppose you plan to invest
>$100 million is a really slick implementation of a new standard
>programming language, an investment to be recovered by sales over
>ten years.  Two years later, the owner of the standard announces a
                                  ^^^^^
Umm, I wasn't aware that DoD is the "owner" of the standard, though
I suppose you could argue it was in 87 or so. 

>wholesale revision of the language that it will cost you another
>$50 million to cope with.  In effect, $50 million in "investment"
>(or "sunk cost") has been wiped out by political fiat.  

I was under the impression that the push for most of what's in 9X came 
from its real users, not the owner of the standard but its contractors.
I thought the name of the game was "listening to the customer". That is
what Robert Dewar and others have been defending here.

Are these numbers just rhetorical? Or are you saying that a 9X compiler
will really cost a company half its original investment?

> And the
>company that gambled on soaking the customer and breaking even in
>18 months flat is laughing all the way to the bank...

Well, what I keep hearing is that _nobody_ is laughing all the way
to the bank. They all claim to be broke. And their original customer
base is - at best - stable, not growing. Without a new customer base,
nobody wins. 

Mike