From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,ac39a12d5faf5b14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 11232c,e59a9d893a249e86 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-04-22 10:57:01 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: Re: Outside view (still): Development process in the Ada community Date: 22 Apr 2002 10:57:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0204220957.242468c6@posting.google.com> References: <3CB46975.90408@snafu.de> <5ee5b646.0204171415.18ac5e85@posting.google.com> <99c4aee4a9ea33ca8fbe1e634b3b4f14.48257@mygate.mailgate.org> <3CBE49C4.99CFA22D@adaworks.com> <3CC05650.5060908@snafu.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.14 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1019498221 21108 127.0.0.1 (22 Apr 2002 17:57:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Apr 2002 17:57:01 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:22929 misc.misc:6780 Date: 2002-04-22T17:57:01+00:00 List-Id: "Marin David Condic" wrote in message news:... > Other than issues of time and money, I don't see why it > *can't* work. Here's the thing: I could put up a web page > and declare myself the Informal Ada Conventions > Consortium and declare "Henceforth, the following > packages are considered to be Official IACC standards and > all Ada implementations need to include them in order to > be conformant!" What weight does it carry? Well none at all of course. And one thing to realize is that the ISO process does not have some external legitimacy. It derives legitimacy from reflecting input of vendors and serious Ada users. If you can't get vendors or serious Ada users to buy in, you should not imagine that you can persuade ISO to issue standards for things that do not have this kind of interest level. You certainly can't go to ISO and say, "look, we don't seem to be able to get any vendors or major Ada users interested, but those folks who post on CLA are really enthusiastic". On the other hand actual useful implementations are definitely a way to generate such interest, and that remains the best way to make progress. An interesting precedent here is the attempt to pseudo-standardize the Win32 bindings in the ARA environment. There just was not enough interest to overcome the problems. One thing to realize is that official conformance and validation has largely disappeared as a major concern. The validation process itself has now been relaxed so that basically all that needs to happen is a vendor says that they pass the tests, pay some money, and you get a certificate. ACT views this kind of validation as pretty meaningless, and if we do further validations they will be in the old style with on-site verification. In fact, while we certainly find it very useful to run the ACATS tests (we run them every night on all targets and make sure that we pass them), we see almost no demand for formal validation. What I think would be most useful is to generate new bindings and useful packages. Quite a few people (like Tom and Ted and Florian and Michael and others -- I am not trying to make a complete list here, and I would never succeeed) have put in effort on this, and that seems to be by far the best use of energy.