Re: Standard Library Interest?

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

At this point, nobody is proposing a business plan. I respect what 
you're saying because it soumds an awful lot like what I've been saying 
about volunteer efforts. Most people (myself included) have some amount 
of time they might kick in to build something if they thought there was 
soem reasonably charitable goal - like helping Ada to grow. But 
something like a CAL that was anything more than a container library 
(and thus a small, bounded project) is going to require a level of 
effort that is not likely to come from pure volunteerism. It certainly 
won't produce a high level of quality & consistency on anything 
resembling a schedule.

So I think it takes some kind of funding to get there. A "Business 
Venture" is one way of doing the funding, but that may be problematic. 
Someone would have to see a way of making money from the venture itself 
and that could get in the way of the library gaining widespread 
adoption. OTOH, a joint-venture of some form on the part of the compiler 
vendors, where the vendors treat it more as an R&D thing and don't 
expect it to generate huge amounts of cash on its own - that might be a 
workable answer. Or see if there's any government money left to back up 
Ada research. Or perhaps find some university support. One way or 
another, I think it would take a small handful of salaries to oversee 
the endeavor long enough to get something working in place. How to do 
that? I don't know, but it would take some level of act-of-will on the 
part of the vendors.

MDC


Stephen Leake wrote:
> 
> 
> I'm willing to participate in and contribute to a realistic, viable
> Common Ada Library. But until someone says "I've got a large chunk of
> change to invest in this business plan", I'm not going to give it
> serious attention. For now, I'll stick with my Ada library on my
> website.
> 


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Marin David Condic
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