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: 103376,9b30240b5a381bbf X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-08-24 06:01:48 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Software Economics Date: 24 Aug 2002 06:01:48 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0208240501.3907483@posting.google.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.49 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1030194108 31473 127.0.0.1 (24 Aug 2002 13:01:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 24 Aug 2002 13:01:48 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:28366 Date: 2002-08-24T13:01:48+00:00 List-Id: "Robert C. Leif" wrote in message news:... > There is no economic difference between the devastating effect on > competition of a zero priced browser and a zero priced Ada compiler. There is a no comparison between these situations. In one case, a company is making its product available at no cost to drive out a competitor by subsidizing the effort with other products (Internet Explorer). In the case of ACT, we absolutely definitely do NOT make our product (which is a fully supported Ada compiler, with guaranteed licensing suitable to the application area) available at no cost. In fact many of the threads on CLA (including fulminations by Leif) complain that GNAT Pro is too expensive! > the second was done because of government support and ideology That is complete nonsense, you simply do not know what you are talking about. Bob Leif is making wild guesses and wild statements without the slightest awareness of what is going on. The reason that we make versions of GNAT freely available has nothing to do with government support (which disappeared 7 years ago) or with ideology. The reason we do this is because we think it is the best strategy for the continued health of Ada, and thus for the continued success of Ada Core Technologies. So it's simply good business sense! When Ada first came out, there certainly was no freely available version of Ada, and several companies tried to market low cost products. They all failed. So that's a data point that seems completely contradictory to your thesis. Second observation. There has always been a high quality free compiler for C, and these days for C++ as well. Do you think this has "devasated the market for these compiler technologies?" Of course not, to claim this would be absurd. The reason that we think it is critical to have a freely available high quality Ada compiler around is that it sparks interest in students, hobbyists, and individual engineers who want to experiment. If no one knows about Ada, then who is going to buy *any* Ada technology? - answer no one. Yes, occasionally companies may use the public version of GNAT for mission critical projects. We find that a dubious decision, since the use of unsupported software with no assurance of correct licensing is rather risky. Few companies are willing to take this risk in practice. We don't see that as having a significant impact on the commercial market for Ada. Robert Leif is frustrated that no one will sell him an inexpensive supported Ada compiler, and wants to blame the availability of the free version of GNAT, but he really has nothing to support his claim here, and all the evidence points in the opposite direction. My own analysis: Inexpensive mass market products are possible only if there is a mass market. I don't think there is such a market for Ada tools in the current climate. No one has ever succeeded with this approach yet, and I would not expect them to have succeeded. The scale of things is just not right. If you charge $1000 for a product, then you need to sell several thousand of them a year to support a reasonable development effort, but that's still far to expensive for many hobbyists. Now if you reduce the price to $50, you have to sell ten's or hundred's of thousands of copies a year, and I just don't think the market begins to be there. Furthermore, if you do try to use the mass market model, then you simply can't provide any kind of reasonable support, and our experience is that serious Ada projects really appreciate and need (and can afford) good support. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies P.S. Yes, I know, I said I would not answer any more messages in this thread, but Bob Leif has a funny newsreader that keeps starting new threads for no obvious reason, so the threads won't stay killed :-)