ada software reuse

[karl@grebyn.com (Karl A. Nyberg)]

In article <SRCTRAN.93Mar19103844@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:

>My company, Infotrans, Ada Libraries Limited, Karl Grebyn, and all
>of the others who got burnt big time trying to Ada reuse as a business know
>the reality all to well.

After ten years in the Ada business, I'm glad to have achieved such name
recognition.  Perhaps in the next ten years people will stop using my
company's name as my last name.  I'm sure that people like Jean Alsys and
Ken Telesoft never had that problem. :-)

What Grebyn Corporation does can't REALLY be classed (oops, tagged? :-)) as
Ada reuse.  Our efforts have simply been redistribution.  We take the
various redistributable (i.e., not including stuff like CAMP, ACEC) major
Ada software repositories - STARS (and yes, there is some useful stuff
there), SIMTEL, AJPO and other packages (aflex/ayacc, paradise, Ada/Ed, GEF,
etc.)  and duplicate them for folks who can't pick them up via anonymous FTP
or whatever.  I'll freely admit that there's currently very little value
added, and nothing that I would construe as reuse.  Internally we use some
of this stuff, but not on a large scale or in a formal approach.

And we haven't gotten burned in the distribution business (except by people
who complain that the service we provide is somehow unethical or by the
folks in the various services who place such restrictions on redistribution
to preclude this kind of service - perhaps to attempt to ensure their
revenue?).  It hasn't done the kind of business that book publishing or
consulting has, but we haven't sunk "big time" money or effort into it.

I've "lost" more money with "Ada : Sources and Resources" and "Ada Monthly"
than I ever did with tape redistribution.  And I'm convinced enough that it
is viable as a product line (not a full-fledged business) that I'm doing
some reorganization of the various repositories and software to produce a CD
ROM.

I know real reuse is hard.  Harder than I want to invest in at the moment.

-- Karl --
-- 
Karl A. Nyberg				karl@grebyn.com
Post Office Box 497			Grebyn Corporation
Vienna, VA 22183-0497 USA		+1-703-281-2194