From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,f9d071c8f9592f29 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: amd001@its.maynick.com.au (Andrew Dunstan) Subject: Re: Floating point emulation Date: 1997/03/15 Message-ID: <332b2597.0@news2.maynick.com.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 226158553 References: <3326F958.35AC@aisvt.bfg.com> <5g9a75$6nn@top.mitre.org> Organization: Mayne Nickless Ltd Information Technology Services Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-03-15T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Robert Dewar (dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu) wrote: : One of the changes that happened in the GNAT project when it moved from : being directly supported by the DoD to being commercially supported is that : the choices on such matters have to get far harder nosed. We have little : choice but to work on things that people will pay for. : It would be nice if there were some general free support for educational : users, or if we could afford to provide this kind of free support. There : isn't, and we can't (at least not yet). Good and reasonable point. Most universities will not be able to purchase a meaningful support contract, I guess (in Australia they are being severely squeezed by a neanderthal government, and _every_ dollar has to be watched). I was surprised, however, to discover that my old university doesn't appear to be using GNAT, but a commercial compiler of moderate quality which I suspect (will try to verify) is still an Ada83 version, on Solaris platforms. I have no idea what (if anything) they pay for this, but one idea did occur to me. Perhaps a GNAT Educational Fund could be established, to fund development that would be of educational interest. Of course, since I am no longer in the University world, this idea is put forward with the "recklessness of the non-combatant" :-). Not only could universities contribute the funds they might be paying for other, possibly old, compilers, but corporate donations could also be sought. Just a thought. cheers andrew -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- There's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so - Hamlet http://www.gr-lakes.com/~andrew (including PGP key) PGP Key fingerprint = 5C 44 7D E4 76 A3 31 DE 3D 11 FA 15 4D 87 1F 5E -------------------------------------------------------------------------