Re: Towards a free GNU Ada

[fielding@kiwi.ics.uci.edu (Roy T. Fielding)]

In <33BBB704.167E@velveeta.apdev.cs.mci.com>
James Rogers <jrogers@velveeta.apdev.cs.mci.com> writes:

>Perhaps it is time to remove some conflict from the ACT charter.
>It seems the only way to do this is to either find a continuing
>source of funding for development and maintenance of GNAT, or to
>find some alternate group to perform maintenance of a public
>version of GNAT, effectively creating a separate version from the
>product produced by ACT.
>
>I see a list of possible responses to this problem:
>
>* Use gnat3.09 for a long long time
>
>* Form a consortium of GNAT users, with annual dues which will be
>  paid to ACT to provide public support for GNAT
>
>* Abandon the concept of a free Ada compiler and purchase all our
>  compilers from AONIX, JANUS, Intermetrics, Rational, ACT, etc
>
>* Organize a distributed group of Ada compiler developers to take
>  over development of a free Ada compiler, resulting in a second
>  branch of Gnu Ada development.  Such an effort would likely be
>  haphazard and uncoordinated, resulting in questionable quality
>  and lack of responsibility for compiler defects.

I think that is a paper tiger.  It is unlikely, given the complexity
of Ada95 as a language, that a separate free Ada compiler could be
developed, and no compiler software (free or commercial) takes
responsibility for compiler defects.  The notion that such
an effort would likely be haphazard and uncoordinated is ridiculous;
it would need to be better coordinated and less haphazard than the
existing GNAT development process just to get the project started.
History has shown that community-developed products are consistently
higher quality and more responsive to real user needs than their commercial
counterparts, so the only question is whether the Ada95 community includes
a sufficient core of individuals willing to support a community-based
software project.  I'll be testing that in a couple months.

Robert's suggestion that community-based projects are only capable of
supporting small projects is contrary to established fact: Linux,
FreeBSD, Perl, and Apache are all examples of systems that are supported
and developed by a core group of their user community.  In fact, such
systems tend to evolve into better, more extensible design architectures
in order to maximize the community input and be more flexible in
meeting the needs of individual users.

If you are concerned about the continued development of GNAT as a
platform for free software (as I am), then I think the most constructive
project would be a public, Web/e-mail problem tracking system for GNAT
that allowed everyone (ACT, customers of ACT, and non-customers) to
see what known bugs exist, to post potential fixes, and provide some
focus for the community.  It isn't an easy thing to provide, but it
is certainly a prerequisite to any other Ada95 compiler effort.  And,
I think it would help ACT as much as it would the rest of the community.

....Roy