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=1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,4509214aa8b1885b X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: GNAT Support Costs Date: 2000/02/05 Message-ID: <87i3bi$i6o$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 582012630 References: <86ikmn$o9o$1@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> <86ssls$aim$1@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> <867lgtm6gz.fsf@ppp-162-235.villette.club-internet.fr> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x30.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Sat Feb 05 21:05:58 2000 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 2000-02-05T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <867lgtm6gz.fsf@ppp-162-235.villette.club-internet.fr>, Laurent Guerby wrote: > "Rob Kirkbride" 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 Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.