GNAT Support Costs

GNAT Support Costs

[Robert Kirkbride]

I have recently made enquiries about using GNAT for a small project (typically
only 1 programmer) and was staggered to find out the support costs. Really
I was just after buying a product that I knew I would get new releases for
as and when they came out and feel like I'm not just using a product for free.

Because ACT seem to assume the smallest project will involve 10 programmers
I am forced to have to consider another compiler.

I know Rational do an Ada95 compiler, not sure which platforms it resides on.
My preferred platform is Linux but it could also be Compaq Tru64 Unix.

Does anyone have any recommendations of cheaper compilers that cater for
small projects?

Rob Kirkbride
--
rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Simon Wright]

Robert Kirkbride <rob@laptop.demon.co.uk> writes:

> I have recently made enquiries about using GNAT for a small project
> (typically only 1 programmer) and was staggered to find out the
> support costs. Really I was just after buying a product that I knew
> I would get new releases for as and when they came out and feel like
> I'm not just using a product for free.

If you feel you _ought_ to pay for what you use, that's laudable. You
might consider donating a suitable amount to the FSF?

If you're worried about the availability of GNAT support at all, check
out GNAT chat, people are helpful there.

> Because ACT seem to assume the smallest project will involve 10
> programmers I am forced to have to consider another compiler.

You have to check out what it is you're getting for your money, and
for how long. If you get a single copy of a compiler for a certain
amount, as against ACT support for 9 more people than you need at
considerably more, what is the support you will get like? you might
find you can only raise a few incidents per year, for example. And
there may be ongoing charges for subsequent years, too.

> I know Rational do an Ada95 compiler, not sure which platforms it
> resides on.  My preferred platform is Linux but it could also be
> Compaq Tru64 Unix.

Your preferred platforms are likely to limit you a bit. What's your
target platform?

> Does anyone have any recommendations of cheaper compilers that cater
> for small projects?

Aonix, perhaps?

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <x7vzotxuhdv.fsf@pogner.demon.co.uk>, Simon Wright <simon@pogner.demon.co.uk> writes:
> Robert Kirkbride <rob@laptop.demon.co.uk> writes:

>> Because ACT seem to assume the smallest project will involve 10
>> programmers I am forced to have to consider another compiler.
> 
> You have to check out what it is you're getting for your money, and
> for how long. If you get a single copy of a compiler for a certain
> amount, as against ACT support for 9 more people than you need at
> considerably more, what is the support you will get like? you might
> find you can only raise a few incidents per year, for example. And
> there may be ongoing charges for subsequent years, too.

And there _might_ be a premium for using it on Tuesday's, but
all of this can be evaluated by the purchaser.  Certainly when
I enquired about ACT support there was a minimum number of seats
(although it was 3 at that time, not 10) and that dissuades those
who need less, and might not even be able to generate support
requests fast enough.  Of course ACT is free to set whatever
rules they want and anyone else is free to enter the GNAT support
business as a competitor. 

Larry Kilgallen

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Richard D Riehle]

In article <x7vzotxuhdv.fsf@pogner.demon.co.uk>,
	Simon Wright <simon@pogner.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>Robert Kirkbride <rob@laptop.demon.co.uk> writes:
>> Does anyone have any recommendations of cheaper compilers that cater
>> for small projects?
>
>Aonix, perhaps?

Who knows how long Aonix will be viable for Ada compilers. They just
fired most of the people with any experience in Ada and closed down
the Burlington office where all the Wintel work is done.  Word is
that Aonix even fired their president and others from the old Ada
group.  So, "Aonix, perhaps," but I would not count on it.

Low-cost compilers?  Only GNAT is completed with all the libaries.
Janus from RR Software is pretty good if you can live without some
of the libraries and a few features such as requeue, ATC, and other
seldom-used features. Stoneybrook Software makes the Ada compiler
being used for Sage-ST  (formerly AdaSage), and it produces pretty
efficient code.  Stoneybrook Ada, like Janus, is missing some of
the Ada 95 features.  Rational apparently decided not to upgrade
Meridian to Ada 95.  Maybe Averstar will decide to package its Ada
compiler and sell it in shrinkwrap form if Aonix gets out of the 
Ada business.  

Ada compiler publishing is an expensive business. ACT is discovering
the economics of it and responding appropriately.  In fact, any 
company that relies on compilers for its revenue is likely to find 
the markeplace small.  Borland found out about that before it went
through its restructuring.  Ada is a very tiny marketplace.  To make
money in software one can either raise prices to meet the small 
demand for product or have a product (such as Quicken) for which the
demand is so high the unit price can be small.  It is very difficult
to fault ACT for its pricing given the small marketplace demanding a
high quality product.  Now if Ada were as popular as Java or C++ ...

Richard Riehle
richard@adaworks.com
 

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Jeff Creem]

> the Ada 95 features.  Rational apparently decided not to upgrade
> Meridian to Ada 95.  Maybe Averstar will decide to package its Ada
> compiler and sell it in shrinkwrap form if Aonix gets out of the
> Ada business.
>

Actually I think Rational sold the rights to the old Merdian stuff.
For a while it was used (I believe) as the front end to the old
Ada 83 stuff for Green Hills (they have now dumped it for an
 AdaMagic Ada95 front end).

Rational has updated their Apex environment to support Ada 95. I am
not sure how many of the Annexes they support.

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Ed Falis]

In article <86ikf3$dgn$1@nntp3.atl.mindspring.net>,
  Richard D Riehle <laoXhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> Who knows how long Aonix will be viable for Ada compilers. They just
> fired most of the people with any experience in Ada and closed down
> the Burlington office where all the Wintel work is done.  Word is
> that Aonix even fired their president and others from the old Ada
> group.  So, "Aonix, perhaps," but I would not count on it.

Well, I wouldn't go quite that far.  The owners did replace the executive
management, for reasons unrelated to Ada.

And they did shut down the Burlington office, but there were only 5 of us Ada
junkies left there.  Most of the remaining Ada work has been done in San
Diego, and will continue to be, along with the UK and France.  So, they're
probably still viable.	They certainly didn't fire most of the people with
Ada experience.  Though they probably lost some by getting rid of Dave Kehs,
Ben Brosgol and myself.  But there are still a pretty fair number of others
around to carry the torch, if the company is willing.

It was a purely financial decision.  Your bosses should have bought more
compilers ;-)

- Ed
Ex-Aonix


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Before you buy.

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Geoff Bull]

Robert Kirkbride wrote:
>
> Does anyone have any recommendations of cheaper compilers that cater for
> small projects?

Um, the public version of Gnat?
Then you can sign up for support when it suddenly 
looks like a cheap option.

The other option is to contact all the Ada suppliers yourself.

cheers
Geoff

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Marin D. Condic]

Geoff Bull wrote:
> 
> Robert Kirkbride wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone have any recommendations of cheaper compilers that cater for
> > small projects?
> 
> Um, the public version of Gnat?
> Then you can sign up for support when it suddenly
> looks like a cheap option.
> 
At the risk of trying to tell someone else how to run their
business....:-)

It would seem to me that it might pay to "segment the market" here.
There are tiers of customers with varying levels of support needed. Some
might simply need questions answered and advice on how to use the
product to achieve their objectives. (I've fallen into this category
many times!) Others might need that sort of technical support plus new
releases as soon as they are available. Still others might need all of
that plus bug fixes & enhancements on demand. Also, some projects are
very small (one person) while others could be quite large and long
lived. Structuring support contracts to try to capture each of those
segments makes business sense.

I know I have been in a position when using GNAT where I've simply
needed someone knowledgable about the compiler to talk me through
methods of obtaining the results I want. However, most of these were
one-man operations, some just IR&D efforts to prove out concepts. While
I wanted support, ACT seemed to be at a price point which I might have
been able to justify to the bean counters for a full-up engine control
project, but could never squeeze out the signatures needed for the
little hacker jobs I was doing.

Helpful Household Hint for Ada developers: I could easily get my boss to
sign almost any purchase order under $1500 because that was the level he
was authorized to spend without any review up the pipe. Over that amount
and I'd get told "no" simply because he didn't want to go through the
hassle for stuff that I just wanted and had no "project won't work
unless..." justification lined up. (The project had better have been
pretty important too. Couldn't just be a sideline job.) So it would pay
to find out what that price point is for many larger potential customers
and structure products & services to be under that point. Its easier to
sell individual bite sized pieces than it is to sell the whole lump.

MDC
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Marin David Condic   - Quadrus Corporation -   1.800.555.3393
1015-116 Atlantic Boulevard, Atlantic Beach, FL 32233
http://www.quadruscorp.com/
m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m

Visit my web site at:  http://www.mcondic.com/

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        --  Allan Meltzer, Economist 
=============================================================

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[DuckE]

> It would seem to me that it might pay to "segment the market" here.
> There are tiers of customers with varying levels of support needed. Some
> might simply need questions answered and advice on how to use the
> product to achieve their objectives. (I've fallen into this category
> many times!) Others might need that sort of technical support plus new
> releases as soon as they are available. Still others might need all of
> that plus bug fixes & enhancements on demand. Also, some projects are
> very small (one person) while others could be quite large and long
> lived. Structuring support contracts to try to capture each of those
> segments makes business sense.

I believe the relatively high cost of support for GNAT for small projects is
an indication that ACT is not "hungry" for paying customers.  I view this as
a sign that Ada Core is a healthy company.

As ACT representatives will tell you, their cost is not high when compared
to similar products used in industry.

SteveD

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Marin D. Condic]

DuckE wrote:
> 
> I believe the relatively high cost of support for GNAT for small projects is
> an indication that ACT is not "hungry" for paying customers.  I view this as
> a sign that Ada Core is a healthy company.
> 
Or, they have made a strategic decision to address only the "high end"
of the market. (Rolls Royce did not market a Yugo-esque vehicle, eh?) I
can understand how someone would decide that the small projects & little
guys will not generate enough revenue to make it worth the time you will
put in supporting them. 

Without having a set of numbers to work with, I couldn't possibly say
with any certainty if it would pay to try to provide lesser levels of
support. What I *could* say is this: When I was at Pratt & Whitney, we
might have paid the large cost of ACT support for an embedded compiler
(A market they are not addressing - at least not from my experience.
Things may be changing since last it was an issue for me.) for an engine
control or similar "mission critical" products. We would not consider
that sort of price tag for compilers we were using to build support
tools on PCs & Workstations. We would simply live with the bugs & find
ways around them while developing in-house experience on how to get the
compiler to do what we wanted. Had ACT been able to offer me "X hours of
telephone support for $1000" I might have been able to get that kind of
money and certainly could have used it. I could not justify the full-up
price tag and didn't need all of the services. (Updates and bug-fixes
for a compiler that basically already works well just wouldn't make
sense for building support tools.)

ACT may have decided they didn't want that business, but that doesn't
mean there aren't lots of people who would be willing to give that
business to *someone*. The question would be if that segment of the
market can be addressed in a way that is profitable.

MDC
-- 
=============================================================
Marin David Condic   - Quadrus Corporation -   1.800.555.3393
1015-116 Atlantic Boulevard, Atlantic Beach, FL 32233
http://www.quadruscorp.com/
m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m

Visit my web site at:  http://www.mcondic.com/

"Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin." 
        --  Allan Meltzer, Economist 
=============================================================

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Preben Randhol]

Robert Kirkbride <rob@laptop.demon.co.uk> writes:

| I have recently made enquiries about using GNAT for a small project (typically
| only 1 programmer) and was staggered to find out the support costs. Really
| I was just after buying a product that I knew I would get new releases for
| as and when they came out and feel like I'm not just using a product for free.

Whatever is wrong with the public version of the GNAT compiler?

| Does anyone have any recommendations of cheaper compilers that cater for
| small projects?

Yes the public version of that compiler. Of course _I_ would also
recommend you to release the project under the (L)GPL licence :-)

-- 
Preben Randhol -- [randhol@pvv.org] -- [http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/]     
         "Det eneste trygge stedet i verden er inne i en fortelling." 
                                                      -- Athol Fugard

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Rob Kirkbride]

Thanks for the replies. I think I will stick with using GNAT because it does
seem to be a very good product. Of course I've been using it regularly for
the last few months and on/off for a couple of years before that and it
seems to do everything I need.

I just feel its a shame that ACT don't want to deal with that side of the
business. Not exactly encouraging people to use Ada rather than C++ or
whatever. The end customer may still opt for the support. If not then I
suspect it will be used as a last resort!

If ACT is reading then I would certainly be interested in the justification
for not offering a two-tier level of support, or at least supporting less
users - I mean 10! I'm on a long term support contract for a Nuclear Power
Station control system and that doesn't even need 10 of us!

Rob Kirkbride
--
rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Pascal Obry]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1708 bytes --]


Rob Kirkbride <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> a �crit dans le message :
86ikmn$o9o$1@rk-comp.demon.co.uk...
> If ACT is reading then I would certainly be interested in the
justification
> for not offering a two-tier level of support, or at least supporting less
> users - I mean 10! I'm on a long term support contract for a Nuclear Power
> Station control system and that doesn't even need 10 of us!
>

Ok, here there is something wrong! Are you in the businness of writing good
code, with lot of comments and do you spent lot of time in desing ?

If so, then I do understand that you don't need 10 peoples :)

To increase the Ada business we all ough to start right now to write bad
code with
no comment at all and a lot of "trick"! You know these little things that
save you some
seconds but that will increase by 2 the maintenace cost :) And then you'll
see that
the first ACT contract (for 10 peoples) will be very very attractive :)

Pascal.

--

--|------------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                               Team-Ada Member |
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--|                       Intranet: http://cln46gb            |
--| Bureau N-023            e-mail: pascal.obry@edf.fr        |
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--| FRANCE                                                    |
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--|
--|   http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--|   "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Stephen Leake]

"Rob Kirkbride" <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Thanks for the replies. I think I will stick with using GNAT because it does
> seem to be a very good product. Of course I've been using it regularly for
> the last few months and on/off for a couple of years before that and it
> seems to do everything I need.
> 
> I just feel its a shame that ACT don't want to deal with that side of the
> business. Not exactly encouraging people to use Ada rather than C++ or
> whatever. The end customer may still opt for the support. If not then I
> suspect it will be used as a last resort!

This implies that you can get the level of support you are interested
in for a C++ compiler for less than what ACT charges for Ada. Can you be
specific about what you can get? 

The last I checked, being able to ask questions of Microsoft
engineers, and get real answers, wasn't even on the price list! MS
sells "developer subscriptions" or something like that, for about
$2k/year, but that does _not_ include real question/answer support
(please tell me I'm wrong?).

Does Borland offer something better?

-- Stephe

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Florian Weimer]

Stephen Leake <Stephen.Leake@gsfc.nasa.gov> writes:

> The last I checked, being able to ask questions of Microsoft
> engineers, and get real answers, wasn't even on the price list! MS
> sells "developer subscriptions" or something like that, for about
> $2k/year, but that does _not_ include real question/answer support
> (please tell me I'm wrong?).

I think you can ask a few free questions, after that you have to pay
additonal fees.  Really interesting questions remain unanswered anyway,
as I was told.

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Rob Kirkbride]

Stephen Leake <Stephen.Leake@gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote in message
news:uiu0fl5r6.fsf@gsfc.nasa.gov...
> "Rob Kirkbride" <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
> > Thanks for the replies. I think I will stick with using GNAT because it
does
> > seem to be a very good product. Of course I've been using it regularly
for
> > the last few months and on/off for a couple of years before that and it
> > seems to do everything I need.
> >
> > I just feel its a shame that ACT don't want to deal with that side of
the
> > business. Not exactly encouraging people to use Ada rather than C++ or
> > whatever. The end customer may still opt for the support. If not then I
> > suspect it will be used as a last resort!
>
> This implies that you can get the level of support you are interested
> in for a C++ compiler for less than what ACT charges for Ada. Can you be
> specific about what you can get?
>
> The last I checked, being able to ask questions of Microsoft
> engineers, and get real answers, wasn't even on the price list! MS
> sells "developer subscriptions" or something like that, for about
> $2k/year, but that does _not_ include real question/answer support
> (please tell me I'm wrong?).
>
> Does Borland offer something better?
>
> -- Stephe

I feel as if some people are missing the point.I agree some people would
like/need all that support. ACT offer services such as helping with
performance, porting from Ada 83 etc. I also don't need help with Ada - I've
been using it for years.
For the project I am on at the moment all that support is just not required.
I would like just to buy a compiler, if I find bugs I would like to be able
to report them. If a fix exists I would like to take that fix. I also don't
need a support infrastructure to support 10 different people.
I agree about Microsoft, oh you've found a bug, if you just buy the next
version its fixed (several other things broken of course). I'm not
suggesting it should be the price of an C++ compiler, just that the support
costs have some sort of sliding scale depending on the number of users and
the support required. As I'm from the UK I know that British Aerospace use
the product, thats great and I sure they find the support and costs fine.
Indeed the support that is offered looks very impressive.

Of course its still possible the end customer will sting for the cost as
they are interested in the long term future of all the rest of the legacy
code and what they might do in a few years when they want to upgrade the
hardware, but thats not the issue here.

Rob

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Laurent Guerby]

"Rob Kirkbride" <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> writes:
> [...] For the project I am on at the moment all that support is just
> not required.  I would like just to buy a compiler, if I find bugs I
> would like to be able to report them. If a fix exists I would like
> to take that fix. I also don't need a support infrastructure to
> support 10 different people. [...]

Hi Rob, I must admit I still fail to see why the public version of
GNAT doesn't meet your needs here. You pay $0 (or $x if you get it
from a cheap byte CD), you have an email to report bugs too, you'll
get fixes with the next public version (that you can buy too), and if
you're on Linux you have a dedicated team that is able to produce
Linux related fixes (also with an email). If you're stuck with a
problem, it's probable some experimented GNAT user (or customer) will
propose a workaround on mailing lists/newgroups.

If it's the $0 tag or having to pay to some company that doesn't
improves GNAT directly that is a moral problem, you can always
write a check to the FSF or to ACT (I don't know if they have a
special fund for this).

--LG

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Rob Kirkbride]

I didn't realise you could "buy" the public version - what does that
actually mean?

Yes I've just discovered the Linux team and that has alievated some of my
worries. I have to admit when a couple of years ago I found a bug in
Sequential_Io (or Direct_Io) for Gnat and I sent back ACT a fix. I was
impressed with the response I had from them even when I was using the public
version.
I guess its just the warm feeling that you have knowing that a product is
supported, but partly from my experience and what you say maybe the 'risk'
of not having a product that is officially supported will not be too bad.
I'm afraid I still believe that ACT have priced themselves out of a certain
slice of the market, but I'm no business man and its not my company.

Rob

Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org> wrote in message
news:867lgtm6gz.fsf@ppp-162-235.villette.club-internet.fr...
> "Rob Kirkbride" <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> writes:
> > [...] For the project I am on at the moment all that support is just
> > not required.  I would like just to buy a compiler, if I find bugs I
> > would like to be able to report them. If a fix exists I would like
> > to take that fix. I also don't need a support infrastructure to
> > support 10 different people. [...]
>
> Hi Rob, I must admit I still fail to see why the public version of
> GNAT doesn't meet your needs here. You pay $0 (or $x if you get it
> from a cheap byte CD), you have an email to report bugs too, you'll
> get fixes with the next public version (that you can buy too), and if
> you're on Linux you have a dedicated team that is able to produce
> Linux related fixes (also with an email). If you're stuck with a
> problem, it's probable some experimented GNAT user (or customer) will
> propose a workaround on mailing lists/newgroups.
>
> If it's the $0 tag or having to pay to some company that doesn't
> improves GNAT directly that is a moral problem, you can always
> write a check to the FSF or to ACT (I don't know if they have a
> special fund for this).
>
> --LG

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Laurent Guerby]

"Rob Kirkbride" <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> writes:

> I didn't realise you could "buy" the public version - what does that
> actually mean?

Well, when you purchase a CD that has a GNAT compiler on it, you "buy"
the public version. If you choose well, you can make sure some money
is donated to the FSF (some company do that).

> I guess its just the warm feeling that you have knowing that a product is
> supported, but partly from my experience and what you say maybe the 'risk'
> of not having a product that is officially supported will not be too bad.

GNAT is both commercialy supported (for as long as ACT has customers
and is willing to release public versions) and community supported
(ALT, for as long as people are interested in it). It's just that if
you don't have an ACT support contract your "use of the software" is
not supported, but for some "in general" meaning the software is
supported ;-).

> I'm afraid I still believe that ACT have priced themselves out of a certain
> slice of the market, but I'm no business man and its not my company.

Certainly a reasonable opinion.

--LG

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Robert Dewar]

In article
<86k8kqowac.fsf@ppp-108-200.villette.club-internet.fr>,
  Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org> wrote:
> "Rob Kirkbride" <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> writes:
> > I'm afraid I still believe that ACT have priced themselves
> > out of a certain slice of the market, but I'm no business
> > man and its not my company.
>
> Certainly a reasonable opinion.

It is not at all ACT's intention to cover 100% of the needs
of the Ada market. We specialize in a particular segment of
the market, namely large scale users who want to use GNAT,
and need high level support. We concentrate on being good
at that, and the company is being successful in this
specialization. So it is not that we have priced ourselves
out of a certain slice of the market, it is simply that our
business plan never included servicing that slice of the
market. We have left the business of selling low cost Ada
products to other companies, e.g. Aonix, who sells an
inexpensive version of Ada 95 for Windows.

It is a healthy and natural consequence of a lively market
that not all companies try to cover all possible product
needs. There is room for both Rolls Royce and Volkswagen
in the marketplace, people do not complain that Rolls Royce
has priced themselves out of the economy market.

High level support from top level technical engineers (as I
think most of you know, we have no separate support staff at
ACT, all our senior engineers have support as their primary
priority), is an expensive proposition. Not everyone needs it.
For those who *do* need it, many find the ACT support programs
for GNAT to be a bargain. It does not take much time saving
for a project team to easily pay for a support contract!

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies


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Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Andreas Winckler]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> It is not at all ACT's intention to cover 100% of the
> needs of the Ada market. We specialize in a particular
> segment of the market, namely large scale users who want
> to use GNAT, and need high level support.

Only innumerous small teams and projects create a mass market which is
what lacks Ada. Not concentrating on the market for small projects and
companies ist the right way to kill Ada.


AW
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------
Andreas Winckler
http://www.talknet.de/~andreas.winckler/
ICQ# : 28867366

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow"

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Robert Dewar]

In article <38A2DE89.BB2A8C5D@gmx.de>,
  Andreas Winckler <andreas.winckler@gmx.de> wrote:
> Only innumerous small teams and projects create a mass market
> which is what lacks Ada. Not concentrating on the market for
> small projects and companies ist the right way to kill Ada.

Well of course several companies in the past and in the present
try to meet this need -- in particular Aonix has an inexpensive
version of Ada 95 available for NT that will meet some of these
needs, and indeed the public version of GNAT meets some of these
needs at even lower cost :-)

Ada Core does not concentrate on this market for two reasons:

1. We don't think there is a market there, despite your
unsubstantiated claims above. Previous attempts to concentrate
on this market have proved an excellent way of losing a lot
of money! Note that Borland lost money trying to pursue this
market for C -- they could not duplicate their previous success
with Pascal -- and that is despite selling hundreds of thousands
of copies of their C compiler.

2. We prefer to concentrate on what we are good at, which is
providing high level support. There are many real success
stories for Ada, and many of them tend to be large scale
projects for which our style of high level support is ideal.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies


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Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Andreas Winckler]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> Well of course several companies in the past and in the
> present try to meet this need -- in particular Aonix has
> an inexpensive version of Ada 95 available for NT that
> will meet some of these needs, and indeed the public
> version of GNAT meets some of these needs at even lower
> cost :-)

Where is the low-cost compiler for Unix?
 
> Note that Borland lost money trying to pursue this
> market for C -- they could not duplicate their previous
> success with Pascal -- and that is despite selling
> hundreds of thousands of copies of their C compiler.

Well, if I remember right Borland came into trouble because
Ashton-Tate was to big of a hunk to swallow. As you stated right Turbo
Pascal was a great sucess (I loved it!) and this proofes that it can
be done.

> 2. We prefer to concentrate on what we are good at, which
> is providing high level support. There are many real
> success stories for Ada, and many of them tend to be
> large scale projects for which our style of high level
> support is ideal.

I think I quite understand your business model, it's fine - for you!
But I still want to do a small, inexpensive project in a small company
and I want to do it with Ada. I'm just sick of arguing against people
who claim that C++ or Java is cheaper.


AW
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------
Andreas Winckler
http://www.talknet.de/~andreas.winckler/
ICQ# : 28867366

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow"

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Tarjei T. Jensen]

Andreas Winckler wrote
>I think I quite understand your business model, it's fine - for you!
>But I still want to do a small, inexpensive project in a small company
>and I want to do it with Ada. I'm just sick of arguing against people
>who claim that C++ or Java is cheaper.


Perhaps you should challenge their understanding of economics. It is people who
cost money.

You can divide ETS (Effort To Solution) into two critical components; money and
time (although everything boils down to money ultimately). Sometimes you can
spend money to lower the time component. If one chooses Ada over C one can
lower the time component. That lowers the total cost.

Perhaps you should try the following on them:
If I get a C compiler for $100 dollars per seat and an Ada compiler for
$10000/year a seat. How much would the C vendor have to pay me so that his
compiler would become cost effective?

Point is that Ada may reduce mthe ETS down to around 30 % of the C ETS. The
cost of a programmers dwarfs the cost of the compiler if he is as productive as
he can with Ada.

For C (probably as C++ and Java) it is customary to forget the phase which
comes just after you have typed in your program. It is the debugging phase. At
least for me, this tends to be noticable even for small programs. It is amazing
how many mistakes I can make in a few lines. When the program works, we
remember the time it took to type it in, but forget the time spent making it
work.

Greetings,

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Andreas Winckler]

"Tarjei T. Jensen" wrote:
> Perhaps you should challenge their understanding of
> economics. It is people who cost money.

I maintain systems with several 100 kLOC written in Ada - I know all
the positive arguments for Ada.

But here are the arguments I'm facing daily which all your arguments
do not address:

- I don't know Ada an I don't want to learn it
- Ada is a dieing language
- too little chances to make career with Ada
- Ada people are hard to find and expensive
- maintenance is paid by the customer
- Ada is too big and slow

By the way, right now I'm dealing with a core dump in an Ada process.
Quite bad, that I was always arguing that this does not happen in Ada.

What I really need is not ammuniton to argue, I have enough of it by
myself. I'm just sick of arguing alone against lots of C++ and Java
guys in our company. Ada is good but it's just being rolled over by
the reality, at least in our company.


AW
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------
Andreas Winckler
http://www.talknet.de/~andreas.winckler/
ICQ# : 28867366

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow"

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Gautier]

> - Ada is too big and slow

This is a referenced <<Ada gossip>>!
Speed and size depend on your compiler, the optimisations it provides
and the optimisations you are actually using, and how programs are
written...

-- 
Gautier

_____\\________________\_______\_________
http://members.xoom.com/gdemont/gsoft.htm

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Tarjei T. Jensen]

Andreas Winckler
>But here are the arguments I'm facing daily which all your arguments
>do not address:
>
>- I don't know Ada an I don't want to learn it

That is a nice one to have on ones resume.

>- Ada is a dieing language

As examplified by the increase in postings on comp.lang.ada

>- too little chances to make career with Ada

The chances are steadily improving AND everything learnt can be re-used with
<your language here>.

>- Ada people are hard to find and expensive

So are _good_ C++/Java programmers.

>- maintenance is paid by the customer


???????????


>- Ada is too big and slow


And C++ is not?? If your C/C++ code checked as much as the code generated by an
Ada compiler your programs would be glacially slow.


>By the way, right now I'm dealing with a core dump in an Ada process.
>Quite bad, that I was always arguing that this does not happen in Ada.

Core dumps will always happen regardless of the language. Any Unix language can
avoid core dumps by providing enough signal handlers. Unhandled signals will
most likely cause a core dump. It is possible to get a core dump even if a
signal is handled, provided that the new signal arrives before the signal
handler is re-installed.

>What I really need is not ammuniton to argue, I have enough of it by
>myself. I'm just sick of arguing alone against lots of C++ and Java
>guys in our company. Ada is good but it's just being rolled over by
>the reality, at least in our company.


The use of Ada seems to be increasing. Notice the steady rise in the number of
messages on comp.lang.ada. The reality is that Ada keeps attracting new people.

One reality is that the use of Python is rising (Linux Journal, december 99).
Most people believe that perl is the big star in scripting. That may change
now. Many seem to find that Python is less work than Perl. How long will it
take before companies now looking for Perl programmers will notice this trend
and start asking for Python programmers? Once Python is on board then Ada
starts to look better.

As more people discovers that C/C++/Java is expensive and take a lot of time to
use, the use of languages like Ada/Delphi/Eiffel will increase. It is probably
just a matter of time before Ada people start to influence the Linux community.
When they do others will be attracted to the language.

How many do we need to get critical mass? Don't know. But the more that is
done, the easier it is for others to re-use.


Greetings,

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Andreas Winckler]

"Tarjei T. Jensen" wrote:
> How many do we need to get critical mass? Don't know. But the more
> that is done, the easier it is for others to re-use.

Well, I try to do my very best to achieve this critical mass. It's just
anything but easy of a job with just 4 Ada developers in a company of
100 to keep Ada alive!


AW
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
Andreas Winckler
http://www.talknet.de/~andreas.winckler/
ICQ# : 28867366

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow"

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Robert A Duff]

"Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> writes:

>... It is possible to get a core dump even if a
> signal is handled, provided that the new signal arrives before the signal
> handler is re-installed.

I believe that Unix bug no longer exists in most modern versions of Unix.

- Bob

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Robert Dewar]

In article <38A3B58C.2358E13E@gmx.de>,
  Andreas Winckler <andreas.winckler@gmx.de> wrote:
> Well, if I remember right Borland came into trouble because
> Ashton-Tate was to big of a hunk to swallow. As you stated
right Turbo
> Pascal was a great sucess (I loved it!) and this proofes that
it can
> be done.

It is a proof that it can be done once! Note that Borland lost
a lot of money trying to replicate this success with Turbo-C
and Turbo-Prolog, but the market was not there. Turbo-Prolog
is in fact a rather good model I think to look closely at.

There were many special circumstances at work for Turbo-Pascal,
not the least of which was that all universities in the US, and
hence many high schools, were teaching Pascal. The situation is
not nearly so monolithic now, and besides there are many
possible alternatives.


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Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Brian Rogoff]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Andreas Winckler wrote:
> Robert Dewar wrote:
> > It is not at all ACT's intention to cover 100% of the
> > needs of the Ada market. We specialize in a particular
> > segment of the market, namely large scale users who want
> > to use GNAT, and need high level support.
> 
> Only innumerous small teams and projects create a mass market which is
> what lacks Ada. Not concentrating on the market for small projects and
> companies ist the right way to kill Ada.

No language ever dies. There are even people today who use SNOBOL.

GNAT provides a zero cost hobbyist solution. What is missing for small
projects that you can't get from another company or the open source world?  

-- Brian

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Andreas Winckler]

Brian Rogoff wrote:
> No language ever dies. There are even people today who use SNOBOL.

Yes, old systems still need maintanence and Ada-Systems will need that
quite long for sure. But all the young college students will jump on
Java, C++ or whatsoever because this is where the new challenges are.

> GNAT provides a zero cost hobbyist solution.

Which is of course a great thing!

> What is missing for small projects that you can't get from another
> company or the open source world?

Is GNAT without support a alternative for small (commercial!) projects?

The number of companies who offer low cost Ada compilers (validated and
supported!) for the Unix world is quite limited, actually there aren't
any. The cheapest Ada compiler for Unix that I know is still at least 10
times more expensive than a good C/C++ compiler. Why?


AW
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
Andreas Winckler
http://www.talknet.de/~andreas.winckler/
ICQ# : 28867366

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow"

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Brian Rogoff]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Andreas Winckler wrote:
> Brian Rogoff wrote:
> > No language ever dies. There are even people today who use SNOBOL.
> 
> Yes, old systems still need maintanence and Ada-Systems will need that
> quite long for sure. But all the young college students will jump on
> Java, C++ or whatsoever because this is where the new challenges are.

I think people use these older languages to develop new products too. 

> > What is missing for small projects that you can't get from another
> > company or the open source world?
> 
> Is GNAT without support a alternative for small (commercial!) projects?

That depends on the project of course. I use unsupported software for 
internal projects all the time (Perl, Tcl, gcc, OCaml, ...). 

If I were working on a project which used GNAT and the cost of failure was
high I'd probably buy support from ACT. What kind of cost are we talking
about here? Tens of thousands of dollars per year? That's peanuts IMO.

> The number of companies who offer low cost Ada compilers (validated and
> supported!) for the Unix world is quite limited, actually there aren't
> any. The cheapest Ada compiler for Unix that I know is still at least 10
> times more expensive than a good C/C++ compiler. Why?

I've found ACT support very good even for the public version of GNAT. 

What would help Ada a lot more IMO is a hoard of hackers pounding out
useful Ada code. 

-- Brian

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Andreas Winckler]

Brian Rogoff wrote:
> What kind of cost are we talking about here? Tens of
> thousands of dollars per year? That's peanuts IMO.

Mass markets are always made from lots of "peanuts".


AW
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------
Andreas Winckler
http://www.talknet.de/~andreas.winckler/
ICQ# : 28867366

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow"

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Ted Dennison]

In article <38A320AD.790389FE@gmx.de>,
  Andreas Winckler <andreas.winckler@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Is GNAT without support a alternative for small (commercial!)
> projects?

The only support option for MS Visual C++ is $150 per incident (and
notoriously bad). That seems to be enough for hordes of small commercial
projects.

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Jean-Marc Bourguet]

In article <38A320AD.790389FE@gmx.de>,
  Andreas Winckler <andreas.winckler@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Brian Rogoff wrote:
> > No language ever dies. There are even people today who use SNOBOL.
>
> Yes, old systems still need maintanence and Ada-Systems will need that
> quite long for sure. But all the young college students will jump on
> Java, C++ or whatsoever because this is where the new challenges are.
>
> > GNAT provides a zero cost hobbyist solution.
>
> Which is of course a great thing!
>
> > What is missing for small projects that you can't get from another
> > company or the open source world?
>
> Is GNAT without support a alternative for small (commercial!)
> projects?

I know of at least one million lines applications (I do not know if
you call this small or big) developped with gcc without support
(as a matter of fact, they kept gcc 2.7.x for a long time because of
the upgrading cost; by the way upgrading a compiler is not something
done lightly in all compagnies I've worked for). Why would it not be
possible for something written in Ada instead of a mix of C and C++?

> The number of companies who offer low cost Ada compilers (validated
> and
> supported!) for the Unix world is quite limited, actually there aren't
> any. The cheapest Ada compiler for Unix that I know is still at least
> 10
> times more expensive than a good C/C++ compiler. Why?

Market size can be a factor (development cost for a compiler is nearly
independant of the number of users); the computer vendor have an
interest to have a cheap C and C++ compilers available (and most
computer vendor are also compiler vendor so this increase pressure to
other vendor), validation also has a cost.

This is without speaking about the quality of support (from my
experience, I've better support from ACT as an unsupported user than
with some compiler vendors from which we have a support contract and not
the cheapest one...).

-- Jean-Marc


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Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <38A2DE89.BB2A8C5D@gmx.de>, Andreas Winckler <andreas.winckler@gmx.de> writes:
> 
> Robert Dewar wrote:
>> It is not at all ACT's intention to cover 100% of the
>> needs of the Ada market. We specialize in a particular
>> segment of the market, namely large scale users who want
>> to use GNAT, and need high level support.
> 
> Only innumerous small teams and projects create a mass market which is
> what lacks Ada. Not concentrating on the market for small projects and
> companies ist the right way to kill Ada.

Not concentrating is the right way to kill a company.

ACT has chosen a business model that happens to be quite amenable
for someone else to concentrate on the segments where ACT has not
concentrated.  It may be annoying to have the first entrant in the
GNAT support business not have chosen _my_ segment as their target
market, but it is better than have them include it and then lose
focus.

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Robert Dewar]

In article <38A2DE89.BB2A8C5D@gmx.de>,
  Andreas Winckler <andreas.winckler@gmx.de> wrote:
> Only innumerous small teams and projects create a mass market
> which is what lacks Ada. Not concentrating on the market for
> small projects and companies ist the right way to kill Ada.

Well of course several companies in the past and in the present
try to meet this need -- in particular Aonix has an inexpensive
version of Ada 95 available for NT that will meet some of these
needs, and indeed the public version of GNAT meets some of these
needs at even lower cost :-)

Ada Core does not concentrate on this market for two reasons:

1. We don't think there is a market there, despite your
unsubstantiated claims above. Previous attempts to concentrate
on this market have proved an excellent way of losing a lot
of money! Note that Borland lost money trying to pursue this
market for C -- they could not duplicate their previous success
with Pascal -- and that is despite selling hundreds of thousands
of copies of their C compiler.

2. We prefer to concentrate on what we are good at, which is
providing high level support. There are many real success
stories for Ada, and many of them tend to be large scale
projects for which our style of high level support is ideal.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies


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Re: GNAT Support Costs

[DuckE]

>
> Only innumerous small teams and projects create a mass market which is
> what lacks Ada. Not concentrating on the market for small projects and
> companies ist the right way to kill Ada.
>

Just exactly what level of support would you expect from a company
concentrating
on the market for small projects?

Distribution?

Printed manuals?

Some of these services could be made available for a relatively low fee
outside of ACT,
if there is interest.  The problem comes when expectations are higher than
the services
offered based on a low fee.

SteveD

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Craig Spannring]

In article <38a37e75.0@news.pacifier.com>,
DuckE <nospam_steved@pacifier.com> wrote:
>>
>Just exactly what level of support would you expect from a company
>concentrating
>on the market for small projects?
>
>Distribution?
>
>Printed manuals?

Amazingly enough, the main problem I've had with free software in 
industry is the (lack of) up-front cost.

Example-
  A development group I worked with wanted to run some sort of Unix
  on their PCs.  The person assigned to look into it recommended
  FreeBSD.  The idea was shot down by management because you couldn't
  pay money to get FreeBSD.  The group ended up going with Linux
  because you actually could give somebody money to get a copy of
  Linux.  (Please no flames about Linux being better/worse than FreeBSD.)

  
-- 
=======================================================================
 Life is short.                  | Craig Spannring 
      Bike hard, ski fast.       | cts@internetcds.com
 --------------------------------+------------------------------------

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <7oZo4.240$Cx.183@newsfeed.slurp.net>, cts@kampong.aedinc.net (Craig Spannring) writes:

> Example-
>   A development group I worked with wanted to run some sort of Unix
>   on their PCs.  The person assigned to look into it recommended
>   FreeBSD.  The idea was shot down by management because you couldn't
>   pay money to get FreeBSD.  The group ended up going with Linux
>   because you actually could give somebody money to get a copy of
>   Linux.

To refute this, I just pulled up http://www.cdrom.com/ , and in the
ephemeral World Wide Web today, from my machine, FreeBSD is shown
at the top of their "best sellers" box (followed by two Linux variants).

I have no way to verify that it is really a best seller, but it certainly
is offered for sale on CDrom.

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Tarjei T. Jensen]

Andreas Winckler
>Only innumerous small teams and projects create a mass market which is
>what lacks Ada. Not concentrating on the market for small projects and
>companies ist the right way to kill Ada.


Not really. The only thing that will save ada is us creating useful ada code.

With ACT we have the best of both world. We get the compiler for free. We get
reasonable support (actually I think it is very good) through comp.lang.ada,
chat@act and the other mail list which I don't remember the name of now.

We can report errors to act. We may not get star treatment there, but I'm not
sure any other compiler vendor gives better support to their paying customers.

Greetings,

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Jean-Marten Marchi]

On Sat, 05 Feb 2000 21:13:09 GMT, Robert Dewar
<robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:


>It is a healthy and natural consequence of a lively market
>that not all companies try to cover all possible product
>needs. There is room for both Rolls Royce and Volkswagen
>in the marketplace, people do not complain that Rolls Royce
>has priced themselves out of the economy market.

Did you know that Rolls Royce is owned by... Volkswagen ? 

Cordially,

Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Robert Dewar]

In article <bnr3as8qp8e5li737jdplhjha2eju0lqni@4ax.com>,
  Jean-Marten Marchi <jmarten@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 05 Feb 2000 21:13:09 GMT, Robert Dewar
> <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> >It is a healthy and natural consequence of a lively market
> >that not all companies try to cover all possible product
> >needs. There is room for both Rolls Royce and Volkswagen
> >in the marketplace, people do not complain that Rolls Royce
> >has priced themselves out of the economy market.
>
> Did you know that Rolls Royce is owned by... Volkswagen ?


Yes, of course, that was a little joke .. the point is still
there of course Volkswagen will not change the name of RR's
to VW's.

:-)


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Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Robert Dewar]

In article
<867lgtm6gz.fsf@ppp-162-235.villette.club-internet.fr>,
  Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org> wrote:
> "Rob Kirkbride" <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> writes:
> > [...] For the project I am on at the moment all that support
is just
> > not required.  I would like just to buy a compiler, if I
find bugs I
> > would like to be able to report them. If a fix exists I
would like
> > to take that fix. I also don't need a support infrastructure
to
> > support 10 different people. [...]
>
> Hi Rob, I must admit I still fail to see why the public
version of
> GNAT doesn't meet your needs here. You pay $0 (or $x if you
get it
> from a cheap byte CD), you have an email to report bugs too,
you'll
> get fixes with the next public version (that you can buy too),
and if
> you're on Linux you have a dedicated team that is able to
produce
> Linux related fixes (also with an email). If you're stuck with
a
> problem, it's probable some experimented GNAT user (or
customer) will
> propose a workaround on mailing lists/newgroups.
>
> If it's the $0 tag or having to pay to some company that
doesn't
> improves GNAT directly that is a moral problem, you can always
> write a check to the FSF or to ACT (I don't know if they have
a
> special fund for this).

Please do NOT send contributions to ACT, we are not in the
contribution business. Send contributions to FSF instead,
which is indeed a non-profit organization partly supported
by donations.

If you are comfortable using unsupported software with no
support or guarantees from anyone, then indeed the public
version of GNAT may be just what you need. I would caution
that you can't necessarily rely on comp.lang.ada or the
chat list for help. Many questions go unanswered, and many
of the answers from volunteers are wrong or misleading, which
is not at all surprising, some of the issues are quite complex
(a good example of this is the thread on elaboration that
is current, the response is straigntforward here, especially
if you have read the GNAT documentation, but neither response
is really the helpful one so far :-) Furthermore, especially
with Ada 95, it is often hard for people to be sure whether
something is a bug report, or just a misunderstanding of the
language or the system. The majority of bug reports turn out
to be the latter!

ACT deals with clients who need fully supported software, often
they need formal validation (the public version of course is not
and cannot be validated unless you do it yourself), and they
find the high level of support that we can provide valuable (as
we see from the very high rate of support renewal from our
customer base). Part of the value of this support is precisely
that you can ask questions without worrying about whether they
are Ada questions, GNAT questions, or real bugs.

Yes, we quite understand that some folks would like a GNAT based
product with a lower level of support. That's quite a reasonable
idea, it is just not the business that ACT happens to be in.
Nothing is stopping anyone else from providing this service
(whether you can make a viable business doing it is another
concern, but that's a separate issue). Labtek did in fact try
to make a go of it in the NT area doing precisely this, and we
were happy to cooperate with that effort, but they abandoned
it precisely because it was not a viable business.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies



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Re: GNAT Support Costs

[Rush Kester]

You might want to contact Aonix about ObjectAda.  They offer a subscription
service with 1 (sometimes 2) updates per year for a very reasonable price,
certainly less than ACT support for GNAT.


Rush Kester
Software Systems Engineer
AdaSoft at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.
email:  rush.kester@jhuapl.edu
phone: (240) 228-3030 (live M-F 9:30am-4:30pm, voicemail anytime)
fax:      (240) 228-6779
http://hometown.aol.com/rwkester/myhomepage/index.html



Rob Kirkbride wrote:

> Stephen Leake <Stephen.Leake@gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote in message
> news:uiu0fl5r6.fsf@gsfc.nasa.gov...
> > "Rob Kirkbride" <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> writes:
> >
> > > Thanks for the replies. I think I will stick with using GNAT because it
> does
> > > seem to be a very good product. Of course I've been using it regularly
> for
> > > the last few months and on/off for a couple of years before that and it
> > > seems to do everything I need.
> > >
> > > I just feel its a shame that ACT don't want to deal with that side of
> the
> > > business. Not exactly encouraging people to use Ada rather than C++ or
> > > whatever. The end customer may still opt for the support. If not then I
> > > suspect it will be used as a last resort!
> >
> > This implies that you can get the level of support you are interested
> > in for a C++ compiler for less than what ACT charges for Ada. Can you be
> > specific about what you can get?
> >
> > The last I checked, being able to ask questions of Microsoft
> > engineers, and get real answers, wasn't even on the price list! MS
> > sells "developer subscriptions" or something like that, for about
> > $2k/year, but that does _not_ include real question/answer support
> > (please tell me I'm wrong?).
> >
> > Does Borland offer something better?
> >
> > -- Stephe
>
> I feel as if some people are missing the point.I agree some people would
> like/need all that support. ACT offer services such as helping with
> performance, porting from Ada 83 etc. I also don't need help with Ada - I've
> been using it for years.
> For the project I am on at the moment all that support is just not required.
> I would like just to buy a compiler, if I find bugs I would like to be able
> to report them. If a fix exists I would like to take that fix. I also don't
> need a support infrastructure to support 10 different people.
> I agree about Microsoft, oh you've found a bug, if you just buy the next
> version its fixed (several other things broken of course). I'm not
> suggesting it should be the price of an C++ compiler, just that the support
> costs have some sort of sliding scale depending on the number of users and
> the support required. As I'm from the UK I know that British Aerospace use
> the product, thats great and I sure they find the support and costs fine.
> Indeed the support that is offered looks very impressive.
>
> Of course its still possible the end customer will sting for the cost as
> they are interested in the long term future of all the rest of the legacy
> code and what they might do in a few years when they want to upgrade the
> hardware, but thats not the issue here.
>
> Rob