Re: Feasibility/Requirements/Wishes of xAL (was: Standard Library Interest?)

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

There's a job for some TBD SIGAda committee - and one that is best dealt 
with by a committee. As you observe, its potentially time consuming, so 
you'd want to be sure it was adequately covered.

As you bring up AdaPower, this is an illustration of the problem with a 
volunteer effort. I don't know how actively David Botton is doing 
anything with it at this time, but he clearly spent some time making a 
wonderful website that served a very useful purpose. However, being as 
its a "volunteer" effort, its difficult to keep putting energy into it 
over time when other priorities come up in life. We could also sit here 
and dream up "Requirements" for AdaPower and try to impose them on David 
- and they might be really wonderful and important requirements too - 
but we aren't paying him to do the work, so how could we expect to get 
it done?

That's why I'm thinking that a CAL would need some paid support in order 
to succeed. There might be some amount of work that is done by 
volunteers - I could imagine some people submitting specialized chunks 
of the library just because they want to see it come along with Ada 
compilers for their own convenience, etc. But developing and managing 
the library over time is likely to be something too big and too 
important to leave in the hands of volunteers.

MDC

Robert I. Eachus wrote:
> 
> 
> I don't want the (possibly volunteer) developers spending all their time 
> dealing with naming issues--which as I pointed out can include trademark 
> and copyright issues.  That is the stuff that formal standards 
> committees can be good at.  Look at all the chaos caused by AdaPower 
> once the site was no longer maintained.  Having an authority to resolve 
> naming disputes is very helpful when it comes time to clear the underbrush.
> 
> But again, as I said, it is useless without a group of developers who 
> want to do things right.  With active developers using it, it becomes 
> one of those committees where the chair does several hours of work a 
> week.  Everyone else on the committee does a couple hours of work every 
> three or four months, when the chairperson actually needs the committee 
> to make an official decision.
> 


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Marin David Condic
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