Re: Ada on openvms for alpha

[David Botton <david@botton.com>]

> Nope -- But this illustrates one of the weaknesses of the Ada market:
> If there's only a single free [and up-to-date] implementation, then if 
> it drops support for a platform that platform is inaccessible to Ada 
> programming.

I don't know if that is accurate, as long as there is an open license on GNAT there was no reason for anyone to not take on supporting it if there was a demand (obvious there is no financial demand or AdaCore would continue).

Just like there is no reason that GNAT can't be forked by others and worked on.

The real problem is that there isn't a known business market for Ada outside a small (but 'overly' lucrative) niche and no company has invested the marketing to create or find those other markets yet.

For example, I don't have the interest nor am I the expert, but some one that wanted to a make a few dollars should be able to roll this guy an openVMS alpha of at least an older version of GNAT that will work. I am sure he would be will to pay for it.

> Hopefully the situation with GNAT being the /only/ free and modern-spec 
> implementation will change shortly.

I don't know how much it matters if GNAT is the only one, what matters is if AdaCore is the only one working on it and supporting it. They have been good about giving back to the FSF much of their work, but let's say they pulled the plug on that effort (which would not surprise me) just like they did with the license "shtick" on GNAT-GPL.

I think it would be cool to have competitive open source Ada compilers, but it is more cool if there were more people working on what exists to insure its long term future use for the community use.

David Botton