Re: Microsoft & Ada

[Adrian Hoe <AdrianHoe@nowhere.com>]

Wes Groleau wrote:

> Brian May wrote:
> 
>> What if, say Microsoft were to design and implement thick Win32
>> bindings for functions that are not standardized in Ada? Some
>> examples: Win32 GUI or serial IO.
>>
>> Would this be considered a good thing or bad thing?
> 
> 
> Probably good, unless it was an attempt (and a successful
> one) to eliminate open source bindings and therefore
> other products using open source bindings.
> 
>> What if there were able to implement the bindings in such a way that
>> they don't have to supply any source code? What if the bindings can
>> only be used with Microsoft's compiler? (I guess it may still be
> 
> 
> Even if Microsoft's compiler is fully validated (and I wouldn't
> take _their_ word for it for a second), it could still contain
> extensions (for example, GNAT has 'Img) that no other compiler
> has--and as soon as another copies it, M$ will change it.
> 
> Then their bindings could be written to use such extensions....
> 
>> I think there are a number of related issues here, so I am curious
>> what peoples thoughts are on the matter.
> 
> 
> My thoughts are that no matter how good a Microsoft
> product is or seems to be, their history shows that
> they nearly always include some kill-the-competition
> feature.  And rarely include enough reliability
> features.
> 

I strongly agree to last statement.

-- 
Adrian Hoe
m a i l b o x AT a d r i a n h o e . c o m