Re: Death by analogy Part 2 (was Re: is ada dead?)

["Michael P. Card" <michael.p.card@lmco.com>]

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Hey Al (& everyone else on CLA)-

A minor correction here to Dr. Leif's citation: it isn't my FIRM. I was one member of the excellent team that built
FIRM, and today I am one member of the team that is improving and deploying FIRM's successor (RODEO). Strictly
speaking, the intellectual property rights for FIRM and RODEO belong to Lockheed Martin Corporation and I think the
U.S. Government has "unlimited rights" as well, i.e. Lockheed cannot charge the U.S. Government a "license fee" to use
FIRM inasmuch as it was paid for with U.S. tax dollars.

Anyway, the situation you portray is this:

>This is Ada and military-industrial complex suppliers.  I assume it's the same old
>story: If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

I think the situation is worse than that! Right now, you can't get these particular products no matter how much $ you
have because defense contractors are not set up to be independent software vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, etc. Defense
contractors are very much (in my mind) like housing contractors. If you want them to build an addition on your house,
you give them a call and they come estimate the job and give you a quote (this is the RFP or Request For Proposal
phase). You haggle on the price, maybe you decide to give up a few square feet or a half bath to get within your budget
(the BAFO or Best And Final Offer process), and then finally you hire them to do the work (going under contract). They
then take longer than they originally estimated to finish the work ;-)

A business set up to operate in this kind of "build-to-order" environment is simply not capable of mastering the other
kind of business model, which would be more like "speculative manufacturing," where you build something you *think*
people will want to buy, thus putting your $$ at risk in hopes enough people will buy your product that you can recoup
your costs and make a profit. This kind of business model relies heavily on marketing and advertising to try to create
interest in the product, and DoD contractors really don't spend a lot of money on that, just like housing contractors
don't do much more than put ads in the Yellow Pages (maybe a billboard now and then).

So, products like FIRM and RODEO are developed as part of the process of building the requested DoD product (Seawolf
submarine, sonar system, EW system, whatever), and the intellectual property rights then lie with a business that is
not capable of turning these things into commercial products. Sure, we have made some half steps at this but there
really is no easy way to do it, and William Dale's post about lawyers is right on. There are a lot of legal nits to
work through when you even try to turn a taxpayer-funded piece of software into a commercial product. There are
probably open source legal considerations as well, and without an established policy on what to do even investigating
these issues will cost $$. Then there's the questions: How big would the market for these kinds of things be? What
would people pay? You have to spend $$ to even get decent answers to these kinds of questions, and in the DoD
contracting world that kind of $$ comes straight out of profit as the government cannot be billed for it. That makes
this kind of investment a non-starter in most places.

The easiest answer (IMO) would be for the US govt to "seed" commercial ventures for these kinds of things by providing
start-up funding to commercialize these products. This seems unfair since the government already paid to develop them,
but there is typically more investment required to make a truly off-the-shelf commercial product beyond what is needed
to build a product as a part of a larger system. The DoD contractors are not paid to spend this extra $$, they are paid
and encouraged to spend as little as possible. They are not motivated to start their own commercial enterprises and
they are usually not even equipped to do so if they wanted to. This leaves a gap that is generally not filled by
anyone.

- Mike

Al Christians wrote:

> "Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." wrote:
> > From my experience with AdaSAGE, the combination of a
> > modern Ada database, such as Michael P. Card's FIRM, and an XML based > GUI could create some rich entrepreneurs.
> >
>
> So, attempting to become a poster child 'rich entrepreneur' on behalf
> of Ada I found some materials on-line about FIRM.  It's from Lockheed
> and Martin, the same people who have done so well with AdaSage.  From
> the web pages, I look for product or ordering info, so I can see how
> much it costs to be rich entrepreneur.  No info there.  This is Ada and
> military-industrial complex suppliers.  I assume it's the same old
> story: If you have to ask, you can't afford it.
>
> Al

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