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From: Dave Wood <dpw@cts.com>
Subject: Re: Win32Ada
Date: 1998/11/15
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Date: 1998-11-15T00:00:00+00:00
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dewar@gnat.com wrote:
> 
> In article <364BE12F.F38A285C@cts.com>,
>   dpw@cts.com wrote:
> > The curious thing is how this happened in the first place
> > If I understand the history correctly, Intermetrics made
> > the bindings through direct government funding, so how
> > did we get into a situation where taxpayers paid for
> > this, as they did GNAT, and yet have to get Bill's
> > permission to use it?  There must be some interesting
> > story there somewhere.

[Needless to say, nothing derogatory was intended
here - I was talking about the original GNAT 
investment, not whatever proprietary follow-on
has gone on since by ACT or anyone else.  By contrast, 
to my knowledge Win32Ada was 100% taxpayer funded, and 
IMHO ought to be a public resource.  Allowing rights
to an uninvolved 3rd party (Microsoft), seems 
completely nutty to me.]

> By the way, the total amount of government money spent on
> GNAT is far less than has been spent on other Ada
> technologies that the government has directly and
> indirectly funded, and most of those stay *completely*
> proprietary. I don't think the fact that tax payers pay
> for something has much to do with the tax payers getting
> free use!

I don't want to get into a protracted discussion 
on this since I have no special expertise in it
and you are doubtless one of the top-ranking
experts, but my gut instinct is that if something
is 100% funded by tax dollars, it ought to be 100%
in the control of the taxpayers or of their elected
representatives, at least if the creator of the
product has no intention to support and evolve it.  
I can see that an exception might be a flat-out 
grant where a priori there are no strings attached, 
such as for basic research.

I'm reminded of ALS, a big fat waste of tax money if
ever there was one (and how many of us had at least
some peripheral involvement with THAT mess?)  If I 
remember correctly, the government retained control 
of the resulting software and made it available on 
mag tape for something like $25, more or less cost 
of materials and shipping/handling.

Or, well, maybe I'm wrong.

-- Dave Wood, Aonix
-- Product Manager, ObjectAda for Windows
-- http://www.aonix.com