Re: A Modest Defense of ACT (though they are big boys and can take care of themselves)

[dewar@gnat.com]

In article <36CF00DB.43DF428C@lmco.com>,
  Steve Quinlan <steven.quinlan@lmco.com> wrote:
> I think it's quite amazing how some people seem to feel
> that because GNAT is free, they can insist that ACT add
> or develop feature x, y or z, because "the users want
> it". (ACT probably knows best what GNAT users want -- God
> knows they probably have more direct contact with Ada
> programmers than any other company).

Well thanks for that nice note :-). In fact at ACT we
always welcome suggestions, and have implemented many of
them. When it comes to large features, we still welcome
the suggestions, but often are not in a position to follow
through, either because we disagree with them, or because
we don't have the resources.

The boundary between suggest/encourage/insist can sometimes
be ill-defined. Let's think positive and assume that what
seems like inappropriate insistance is simply
over-enthusiasm :-)

> Such people then procede to get mightily and indignantly
> upset if the response isn't a nurturing electronic hug
> and immediate acquiescence to their suggestions, along
> with a promised release date!

Again, let's just put that down to enthusiasm. Certainly
it is nice to see people enthusiastic about Ada, even if
it can come across as upset sometimes.

> As a paying customer of ACT (well, I work for a paying
> customer) I find they are very responsive.

Thankyou for that vote of confidence (now I will have to
rush back to our records and make sure we have no
outstanding reports from you :-)

> But the free version is a side benefit. They probably,
> and rightly, extend and enhance GNAT to provide what
> their paying customers need.

Most of the time, I think the needs of our customers do
reflect the needs of the general market. The one place that
this is called into question is when someone says: "If you
add feature X, you will increase your market, since now
GNAT will be used by people who would not use it
otherwise."

Our experience teaches us to be very sceptical of such
claims. I particularly think it is important not to neglect
the current core Ada users in an attempt to win new
markets. I am reminded of a discussion in my theater group
(*) where we were discussing how to attract new younger
audiences, and someone suddenly wondered how our thoughts
would affect our current audiences, which was a sobering
thought!

> They just did so for us for a specific feature we wanted.
> The rest of the world benefits when that stuff becomes
> public.

Indeed many features in GNAT are there because of direct
customer requirements. Sometimes these are things we have
done as part of general support, sometimes they are funded
as special projects.

I have always thought that the fully supported customers
using GNAT Professional and students, researchers,
hobbyists etc using the public release of GNAT are natural
partners.

The paying customers provide the resources to continue the
development of GNAT (our revenue continues to grow, and we
are not getting ebay-style rich, or even some minuscule
fraction of this, but we can afford a first rate staff that
works well together to continue the development of new
versions of GNAT and tools with useful new stuff (I think
everyone will agree that 3.11p has LOTS of nice new
features compared to 3.10p, and I can promise that 3.12p
will be an equally exciting jump).

In turn, the users of the public version pioneer the
testing and use of the compiler. In particular they
tend to be much less conservative than large project
users (quite appropriately) and so they tend to pioneer
the less widely used features of the language.

We continue to get many valuable reports and suggestions
from users of the public version at report@gnat.com. We
cannot discuss these in detail, or provide a rapid
response, but all such reports are eventually read and
examined, and many useful fixes and enhancements have
come from this source, which of course in turn benefits
paying customers.

> I believe ACT is happy to listen to suggestions from
> anyone. Make your suggestions, make your case to them why
> it would be valuable, try to enlist others to your side
> to support that.

Absolutely Steve, that is good advice, and we are indeed
happy to get suggestions. I know it is frustrating some
times to people who are dead sure their suggestion is
*the* key to Ada's success, and they don't find us jumping
to agree, but we do listen carefully to all suggestions.

> ACT will consider it, in the context of their business
> needs. But they make the final decision about whether to
> expend their finite resources on work which their paying
> customers  may not be clamoring for. And no one really
> has much standing to beat them up for it.

Well we do get some funny cases. Once some procurement
agent called me to demand that I give a formal statement
that the version of GNAT 3.10p they were using was Y2K
compliant. I told him we did not make any such statements
about the public version. He got VERY indignant, and
started shouting at me "WELL WHO IS THE MANUFACTURER
OF THIS COMPILER? WHO CAN MAKE THIS GUARANTEE?" I told
him no one, but he was not satisfied. Oh well, we do our
best to sit back and have a chuckle when this sort of
thing happens :-)

> How many other  companies are giving you free Ada
> compilers?

Well it is nice to see that Aonix is making at least some
version of their technology freely available. I suspect
that GNAT had something to do with this, and if so, am
pleased to see it have this effect. If other vendors get
persuaded to consider the open source approach, so much
the better!

> How many other compiler company presidents are here every
> day helping out answering questions, etc. If he didn't
> care about Ada and its users, he wouldn't spend so much
> time here answering our stupid questions, or correcting
> our stupid answers to other people's intelligent
> questions

I never spend time answering stupid questions :-)

> (OK, they're not all stupid -- a bit of rhetorical
> hyperbole there.)

Indeed, despite the occasional frustration over junk in
CLA, this newsgroup is in fact in FAR better shape than
many of the other comp.lang groups, a tribute to the good
taste of Ada programmers and enthusiasts! It is also nice
to see, with rare exceptions, that we very rarely get
completely Ada-irrelevant posts, so the signal-to-noise
ratio stays high. Indeed even the extensive C++ vs Ada vs
.. language "war" thread recently remained remarkably
productive, especially with respect to contributions from
CLA participants

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

P.S. I try to make a distinction between messages which
are purely Robert Dewar sounding off, these come from
dejanews, and are unsigned, and messages which may
reflect ACT positions. I say "may" because we certainly
do not discuss everything and sometimes I may say things
which other people in the company point out to me are
wrong :-)

(*) My theater group, the Village Light Opera Group, the
oldest community theater group in New York, does fully
staged shows twice a year at the Fashion Institute Theater
in New York City, with a full orchestra. We are doing
Brigadoon this spring, and I am playing the role of
Archie Beaton (Harry Beaton's father, Harry is the one
who tries to run away). If anyone is interested in seeing
this show, let me know, or go to our site www.vlog.org.

Now that really IS an ad, but for that by VLOG hat is on,
and not my ACT hat :-)

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