Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Rush Kester <Rush.Kester@jhuapl.edu>]

You might want to contact Aonix about ObjectAda.  They offer a subscription
service with 1 (sometimes 2) updates per year for a very reasonable price,
certainly less than ACT support for GNAT.


Rush Kester
Software Systems Engineer
AdaSoft at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.
email:  rush.kester@jhuapl.edu
phone: (240) 228-3030 (live M-F 9:30am-4:30pm, voicemail anytime)
fax:      (240) 228-6779
http://hometown.aol.com/rwkester/myhomepage/index.html



Rob Kirkbride wrote:

> Stephen Leake <Stephen.Leake@gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote in message
> news:uiu0fl5r6.fsf@gsfc.nasa.gov...
> > "Rob Kirkbride" <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> writes:
> >
> > > Thanks for the replies. I think I will stick with using GNAT because it
> does
> > > seem to be a very good product. Of course I've been using it regularly
> for
> > > the last few months and on/off for a couple of years before that and it
> > > seems to do everything I need.
> > >
> > > I just feel its a shame that ACT don't want to deal with that side of
> the
> > > business. Not exactly encouraging people to use Ada rather than C++ or
> > > whatever. The end customer may still opt for the support. If not then I
> > > suspect it will be used as a last resort!
> >
> > This implies that you can get the level of support you are interested
> > in for a C++ compiler for less than what ACT charges for Ada. Can you be
> > specific about what you can get?
> >
> > The last I checked, being able to ask questions of Microsoft
> > engineers, and get real answers, wasn't even on the price list! MS
> > sells "developer subscriptions" or something like that, for about
> > $2k/year, but that does _not_ include real question/answer support
> > (please tell me I'm wrong?).
> >
> > Does Borland offer something better?
> >
> > -- Stephe
>
> I feel as if some people are missing the point.I agree some people would
> like/need all that support. ACT offer services such as helping with
> performance, porting from Ada 83 etc. I also don't need help with Ada - I've
> been using it for years.
> For the project I am on at the moment all that support is just not required.
> I would like just to buy a compiler, if I find bugs I would like to be able
> to report them. If a fix exists I would like to take that fix. I also don't
> need a support infrastructure to support 10 different people.
> I agree about Microsoft, oh you've found a bug, if you just buy the next
> version its fixed (several other things broken of course). I'm not
> suggesting it should be the price of an C++ compiler, just that the support
> costs have some sort of sliding scale depending on the number of users and
> the support required. As I'm from the UK I know that British Aerospace use
> the product, thats great and I sure they find the support and costs fine.
> Indeed the support that is offered looks very impressive.
>
> Of course its still possible the end customer will sting for the cost as
> they are interested in the long term future of all the rest of the legacy
> code and what they might do in a few years when they want to upgrade the
> hardware, but thats not the issue here.
>
> Rob