Re: SAL, Auto_Text_IO release

[M E Leypold <development-2006-8ecbb5cc8aREMOVETHIS@ANDTHATm-e-leypold.de>]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:

> "Stephen Leake" <stephen_leake@acm.org> wrote in message
> news:u3bdw6njw.fsf@acm.org...
> > > Stephen, I'm not discussing nature or size of my business on
> > > usenet. The point I made in another post was, that entry-costs of
> > > $15000 are quite a hindrance in bootstrapping any business in Ada
> > > software (development) _gradually_.
> >
> > Well, ok. I'm still in the dark. I can't imagine trying to start an
> > actual profit making business on less that $15k. But I guess that's
> > why I'm working for the government :).
> 
> Probably. ;-)
> 
> RR Software was started on an investment of $1500. Admittedly, that wasn't
> enough, but what did we know? That money was earmarked for advertising (else
> no one would know about our products). These days, I'd concentrate on the
> web (cheaper and as effective), but of course that wasn't possible in
> 1981-2.
> 
> If you think a start-up business can afford $15K a year, I think you're
> really out of touch. Start-ups generally have little free money, and it is
> used for essentials: equipment, utilities, rent, marketing, and so on. The
> people are generally paid out of profits (thus "sweat equity", because the
> people rarely earn early on what they would in a typical job). If there are
> no profits, then there is no pay! So the cost of essentials is kept to a
> minimum. I doubt that many would invest $15K a year when there are many
> cheaper alternatives out there.

Many thanks, Randy, for putting the case so much more aptly than I
could have done :-). And also from the horses mouth.

I'd like to add another scenario: Spending 15K for an Ada compiler
support contract is probably only justfied if you make many times that
amount _as business volume_ in Ada software alone. 

Only: Such a volume doesn't come overnight and needs to be slowly
grown. At least at the beginning, even if/when you already have a
business going, only a small minority of projects will be suitable to
be done in Ada. Mostly projects which would have been done in C/C++ if
the new policy weren't Ada now _and_ where the customer doesn't have a
preference (in small projects customers often have irrational
preferences).

So let's have an example: Let's make it simple and assume we have
never done an Ada project before but we have people having Ada
skills. Let's assume that we now have a project, where we can use Ada
and the customer would pay N for that project. Now a very rough
calculation goes like this:

 - The customer expects that we support the product for around 10
   years.

 - Assume we buy a 15K license/support for any of this 10 years, that
   would be 150K we'd have to spend in the future.

 - Support will be slow, let's say S / year (mostly patching away
   already existing bugs, sometimes introducing a new field in the
   data base or the GUI)

 - Then we'll have somehow to pay for the developer time, say D.

So we must have N + S > 150K + D. (I've not included taxes and this
like, but that'd would only make it worser). As a rule of thumb (since
probably S<=D) we conclude: N > 150K.
 
So the conclusion is: Either your first Ada project is 150K in volume
or you're better sure, that it is not your last one (that last is
spelled "RISK"). Or you do it w/o Ada or w/o the support contract.

I might not be completly realistic in some points (since I simplified
a lot), but my principal hypothesis stands: There is a large entry
barrier into the Ada Market if you're forced to buy a 15K license.
(and please note the "if": My research on alternatives and the
licenses of the "available" libraries and their prospective future is
not finished yet).

But if this is so, it contrasts badly to the situation in other
communities (C, C++, OCaml, Scheme, Haskell, Jave: Compiler runtime,
libraries, especial bindings to the OS interface and the graphical
toolkits are all under very liberal licenses as far as "link and sell
your software" is concerned :-) ).

IMHO if Florist and GTkAda go pure GPL that will hurt Ada like nothing
before. I'd wish that the community here (which has some interest in
advocating Ada over other languages, say Java or FORTRAN (pardon,
thats Fortran today ... :-)) would have the ability to see that.

Regards -- Markus