Re: Gnat Free ?

[The Ludwig Family <ludwigs@bellsouth.net>]

dewarr@my-dejanews.com wrote: 

<snip>
 
> We think it is in the best interests of the Ada community and the GNAT project
> to ensure that the public versions of GNAT that are distributed are as free
> as possible from glitches that will cause unsupported users to run into
> trouble. We think that it is better to wait, and perhaps be a little behind
> the latest-and-greatest, rather than deal with glitches.

I wholeheartedly agree.  One of the challenges Ada is facing now is
overcoming a bad reputation earned in the mid 1980s because many compilers
were being released long before they were mature:  full of bugs, poorly
optimized code, slow, ...  We can thank the so-called "Ada mandate" for
this.  I appreciate the desire of ACT to put out a quality product at no
charge for many users--a tremendously positive contrast to the typical vendor
behavior in the 1980s giving Ada a bad reputation.
 
> Now if you are an expert hacker (in the good sense of the word) like Ronald,
> you could probably indeed get by at least some of the problems on your own,
> but we do not distribute the public version for the Ronald Coles of the
> world, but rather for students learning Ada for the first time, a very
> different market.

Since students are key recipients of the public version of GNAT and I am
often involved in teaching Ada in both an educational and an industrial
environment with training operating on a typical academic calendar, it surely
would be helpful if new public releases could come out early August if the
intent is to have them be annual.  Then instructors and system administrators
could be set up and ready to go with the latest public release at the start
of the academic year.  Switching versions in mid-term does not make sense, at
least in my environment.  I know that various events can preclude good
intentions, and the emphasis on quality needs to dominate; also, your paying
customers have far more right than the non-paying academic world to direct
what the contents of the next release should be and when it is needed.  Given
those caveats, it would be nice, and most appreciated by the academic
community, if possible, to aim for early August.
 
> As for our customers releasing the wavefront, it would be unfortunate, since
> it would mean that there were insufficiently tested versions publicly
> floating around. If these versions had significant problems, it could reflect
> negatively on Ada in general, the GNAT project, and free software in general,
> and we think it better to avoid this. Our customers share this viewpoint, and
> understand that it is in the best interests of the GNAT project for them not
> to publish the wavefront versions.

At least your customers seem to have some wits about them, unlike some on
this newsgroup. 
 
> Robert Dewar
> Ada Core Technologies

Thank you for your hard work and support of the Ada community.  Keep it up!

Howard W. LUDWIG