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: 103376,184737148aef02ac X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@gnat.com Subject: Re: A Modest Defense of ACT (though they are big boys and can take care of themselves) Date: 1999/02/21 Message-ID: <7anmqc$pof$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> X-Deja-AN: 446556257 References: <78sojm$crk$1@plug.news.pipex.net> <7982p7$nll$1@plug.news.pipex.net> <87aeyv4kbg.fsf@mihalis.ix.netcom.com> <79asc3$cq3$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <79c2ch$j1c$1@remarQ.com> <79ckt6$rp3$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <7ah65p$4ag$1@remarQ.com> <36CF00DB.43DF428C@lmco.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x9.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 129.37.79.86 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Sun Feb 21 01:17:06 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-02-21T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <36CF00DB.43DF428C@lmco.com>, Steve Quinlan 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 :-) -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own