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: 2002-08-27 18:56:43 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board? Date: 27 Aug 2002 18:56:42 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0208271756.1854ea8d@posting.google.com> References: <7vptwccqfs.fsf@vlinux.voxelvision.no> <7vlm70cqcz.fsf@vlinux.voxelvision.no> <5ee5b646.0208211132.6c283ef0@posting.google.com> <5ee5b646.0208231819.981a776@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.101.126.29 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1030499803 1656 127.0.0.1 (28 Aug 2002 01:56:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Aug 2002 01:56:43 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:28467 Date: 2002-08-28T01:56:43+00:00 List-Id: "Juha Valimaki" wrote in message news:... > If some kind of proof is needed why small markets _need_ every customer look > at it this way: > X is number of people using free tools > Y is number of people using low end commercial tools > Z is number of people using high end commercial tools > > X+Y+Z is the group of all Ada users. If you take away the free tools then N% > of group X will buy a tool. N%*X+Y+Z > Y+Z, if N>0. Note however: Y+Z is > likely to be smaller than X+Y+Z, but the market will be larger in terms of > money!. A completely bogus argument, because it ignores the fact that the existence of a free tool may increase the total number of users, so the X/Y/Z are by no means constant, and you have no evidence that they are (or rather would be) > For me it seems you are afraid that low end solutions would eat up your > revenue Nope, that has nothing to do with it, it is just that this end of the market is not what we specialize in, and we believe our success (our sales are substantially up this year) is significantly due to the fact that we keep a narrow well defined focus. > and that Ada would be used more in general purpose programs that > don't focus on mission critical code No, we don't believe that at all! If you believe it why not start a business aiming at these users, since it sounds like you believe it would be profitable. By the way, notice that you are also agreeing that the X/Y/Z may not be constant in your above equation (though in the opposite direction from me :-) > That's a perfectly legal reason to suppress competition :-) Nobody is suppressing competition here. We are one of the very few software companies that invites you to compete its market, and hands you at no cost the technology that you need to compete. > I really believe Ada tool vendors would understand that there has to be some > way for people to try Ada and do research without large cost. For trying ada and doing research, the public version of GNAT is definitely appropriate, and for sure does not have a large cost. > but I > think many small companies would easily pay $2000-$4000 per developer (PER > DEVELOPER is the key here). Well of course for small teams of people from 3 on up, that's precisely our price range, and you are right, many small companies are prepared to pay this for high level support. The one case where we do not cater to this model is for smaller groups (of 1 or 2 people), but as I said earlier, we did this at first, and found that these isolated users of GNAT expected far far more support than larger groups and we simply could not afford to give them the high quality support that we guarantee at the single seat price. We actually found that the typical pattern was that one person teams asked far more questions than a five person team, but we really can't charge more, but we do charge the same! Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies