Re: GNAT Professional ?

[Paul Whittington <paul@grep.net>]

Thanks for the WONDERFUL news Robert :)

I know that you're running a business at ACT and that the demands of
doing so have made it necessary for you to abandon your former
~$1200 per seat per year supported product offering that made GNAT a
reasonable alternative to Delphi, VC++ etc. for us.  

I'm not happy to hear that ACT's plans only include an annual public
release of GNAT :(

We are a small company, and don't need the kind of support ACT provides
in its product offerings; and we can't afford it :(  We considered 
using the public version of GNAT and relying on our own skills, as well
as the support of the wonderfully helpful folks that use GNAT around 
the world, and came to the conclusion that, unlike the Linux folks
for instance, there just wasn't enough bug-fix/enhancement activity
going on with the public release of GNAT.  It sounds like ACT's plans
support our observation :(

I guess you at ACT have surveyed the Open Source landscape and decided
that unlike some of the other products in that space (e.g. GCC, Tcl/Tk)
that provide source upgrades on a frequent basis doing so with GNAT is
not in your best interest.  Its your business, and you have to make the
call.  I do however have a request.

I request that you read the following statements, and those of anyone
else that cares to chime in, and reconsider your decision to release
only once a year or so.  

Changing your policy and releasing more frequently would not damage 
your reputation as a supplier of high-quality supported Open Source
software.  I think that's already been established.  On the contrary, 
it would serve to backup any commitment ACT has to the tradition of
the Open Source community with concrete action consistent with such a
commitment.  Thus improving your standing as an Open Source supplier.
Additionally, it would help to stimulate the development and use of 
Ada in commercial software projects, thus increasing ACT's potential
"supported product" market.  

On that point, it's not the wealthy conservative corporate IT
organizations, for the most part, that are going to be willing to 
take a chance, use Ada, and see if the Ada ROI is real.  Rather its 
the small software developer, representing equally small and aggressive
business clients that are always looking for an edge, that's going to 
be willing to find out if Ada development and maintenance is really 50%
cheaper.  If its true the small developer's clients will benefit
greatly, larger IT organizations will get interested, and the small
developer may become a larger developer who can afford ACT's supported
product offerings :)
 
In our case, we'd love to be developing state-of-the-art corporate MIS
systems with integrated E-Commerce deployed on intranets, extranets, 
and the Internet using Ada's superior software engineering features,
tasking and distributed system capabilities.  The Ada community as a
whole, and ACT specifically, could be benefiting from our work and
success, as well as the work and success of others.  

Finally, I submit that making more frequent releases would be somewhat
of an invitation to folks to get more involved in the development of
GNAT itself, and tools to support the successful use of GNAT in a
variety of domains.  Now I know that there are already many groups and
individuals involved in GNAT related development, and that more 
involvement could be as much of a problem for ACT as a benefit, but 
having played in the Delphi arena for some time now I do think that the
Ada arena could stand some growth along these lines.  I have the highest
respect and admiration for ACT's GNAT team, and more eyes, experiences,
and imaginations couldn't hurt.

TTFN Paul

dewarr@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> 
> In article <35FABAEA.BBA81103@grep.net>,
>   Paul Whittington <paul@grep.net> wrote:
> > What public version?
> >
> > In two days it'll be one year since the last "public" release of GNAT :(
> 
> The current publicly released version of GNAT is 3.10p, which
> indeed was released about a year ago. Our general plan is
> to make new public releases on approximately a 12 month
> schedule.
> 
> We are fairly close to on track for that. We expect to
> release GNAT Professional 3.11b in the next day or two (we
> will announce that release on CLA, with details).
> 
> Assuming we have no packaging/installation problems in our
> final builds, which we will determine from customer feedback,
> then the corresponding 3.11p release will follow. We have had
> a 3.11b-beta out for a few weeks so we do not expect any
> major suprises. As always we like to be VERY sure that there
> are no installation glitches in the public release, since we
> know that a LOT of people will be trying to install it without
> support, and we want that to be as smooth as possible.
> 
> We will make all support announcements on CLA at the
> appropriate point.
> 
> Robert Dewar
> Ada Core Technologies
> 
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-- 
Paul Whittington
GrepNet, Inc.
paul@grep.net

"Even if you're on the right track you'll get
 run over if you stand still."

Will Rodgers