Re: Rant! (was) Development process in the Ada community

[Michael Erdmann <Michael.Erdmann@snafu.de>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> "Larry Kilgallen" <Kilgallen@SpamCop.net> wrote in message
> news:qnlsMmlYZCr9@eisner.encompasserve.org...
> 
>>Don't worry about getting it into the ISO standards, just get people
>>using a common set of packages and the rest will follow.  There were
>>recent efforts here in this newsgroup in the area of containers; you
>>are free to choose a different venue.
>>
>>There is _nothing_ about the ISO process that is holding you back,
>>and libraries/packages have little to do with core language changes.
>>
> 
> This is true. What matters with respect to libraries is not so much that
> they have some rigid, formally defined, validated, ISO standard as it is
> that at least most of the vendors provide pretty much the same thing. You
> probably want a good deal of flexibility for libraries (at least in their
> early lives) so they can be changed as experience dictates. Maybe at some
> point when a given library has become very widespread and stable you could
> get it declared part of the ISO standard - but you may never really want
> that. Yopu may want to maintain the flexibility of being able to easily
> change out the library for something else.

Yes you may always want to change something, but using standard
components means reliability by beening conservative even if
you are loosing elegance.

> If we had some community concensus that one or more libraries was what we
> wanted for doing job X, all you'd have to do is persuade the vendors to
> distribute it with their compilers and it instantly becomes part of Ada even
> if it isn't part of the "standard".

I dont think that we need the vendors this mutch, most of the popular
open source software is distributed without them (thanks to sites
as sourceforge etc..),

In my mind the idea of a public ada process is showing up:

- There is a job to be done and i have some solution for it. Propose
   the solution to the community (who is this, i gues comp.lang.ada?)

- If sufficient interest has been raised, form a working group
   for this topic and provide an implemenation for public use.

- Proceed until wide acceptance

- Propose to ISO

But this is nothing new, this is the typical open source process as
we know it, the only difference is the last step. I think this is
your second tier idea. May be it is possible to setup a new way of
communication between the public and the ISO WG making the entry
more easier for us. Or maybe it would be a good idea if ISO acts
more proactive by asking the comminity  for entires on certain issues
(e.g. containers etc..)!

Regards
    M.Erdmann







> 
> MDC
> --
> Marin David Condic
> Senior Software Engineer
> Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
> Enabling the digital revolution
> e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
> 
> 
>