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=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: a07f3367d7,5f6322415d6639e0 X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!c18g2000prh.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Eric Hughes Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Will the defect with formal package parameters be fixed in GNAT GPL 2009? Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:08:44 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <76bd0952-f85c-44f5-80ae-b0916a699a35@c18g2000prh.googlegroups.com> References: <558b7171-809b-4259-8679-4b4cff9de519@b6g2000pre.googlegroups.com> <75p7uoF17umq6U1@mid.individual.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 166.70.57.218 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1241042587 29548 127.0.0.1 (29 Apr 2009 22:03:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:03:07 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: c18g2000prh.googlegroups.com; posting-host=166.70.57.218; posting-account=5RIiTwoAAACt_Eu87gmPAJMoMTeMz-rn User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042316 Firefox/3.0.10 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:5608 Date: 2009-04-29T09:08:44-07:00 List-Id: On Apr 28, 2:40=A0pm, Bj=F6rn Persson wrote: > The Ada community's problem is a shortage of people who want to contribut= e. > There's no shortage of people who just want to whine. As I see it, I'm the one with an expressed desire to contribute, and you're the one whining about me. And not the only one, either. I'm actually a little surprised about how many people think I'm at fault, to blame, and/or deserve shame for not Doing-The-Right-Thing and putting in Extra-Effort to report what seems to me to be a very basic compiler defect. Let me be clear. I am not now an Ada user. I have some interest in becoming one again. All other things being equal, I would pick Ada over C++. All other things are manifestly not equal. I have no motivation to try to improve Ada as an outsider. My payback for such activity is speculative at best. I am perfectly content, although a bit disappointed, to see Ada decay toward oblivion. AdaCore has a no support policy for GPL users, which means to me that I expect to be ignored. Other with different experiences assure me otherwise, yet these are not my experiences but theirs. I would be perfectly happy to have someone else, perhaps one of those with different experiences, lay claim to the defect and report it. These days, not supporting the free software penumbra around a platform is a recipe for slow failure. I've been in the position of making platform selection and hiring a new programming team. There are always a number of platforms that are more-or-less adequate and the dominant factor in selecting one becomes availability of staff competent in that platform. Without a free software environment for people to self-train with, the number of available staff decreases. For a language, like Ada, that's not ordinarily part of university curriculum, such an environment can be the dominant mode of training. Platforms are in _de facto_ competition for the attention of programmers/potential-staff. The population dynamics for a platform that treats its free software people with disdain is pretty clear--it will decline. Peter Drucker made the excellent point that if you want to improve your sales, you should talk to your non-customers about why they don't buy (rather than the ordinary practice of talking to your customers about why they do). So here I am, a non-customer, as it were, of the Ada platform. My advice is that listening is a more productive response than blaming.