Re: Proving Correctness (was Java Portability)

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

"David Starner" <dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org> wrote in message
news:tn1n46nn3deedb@corp.supernews.com...
>
> However, the public release of GNAT is done by Robert Dewar for the Free
> Software Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation has made their
opinion
> on the matter more than clear. Not only will their version of GNAT not
> include these libraries, it should not even mention them, as not to give
> publicity to non-free software.
>
What FSF decides to do is their own business. What ACT decides to do is
*their* own business. Right now ACT includes stuff (like AdaGIDE) in the
public distribution that aren't part of the "formal" release of GNAT. If you
were to write some useful library of stuff and ACT put it out on the disk
right next to GNAT how does that affect FSF? We're talking about a whole
separate body of code that can be included in any number of manners in
someone's compiler delivery. All they have to do is believe that it is to
their advantage to include some .ZIP file or directory on the CD they ship
you or the FTP site the make accessdable and there you have it. The FSF
doesn't exactly have a small garrison of storm troopers to leave at your
offices to keep you from doing things they don't like.


> The problem is, I'm not a saint, and I'm not really a fool, and neither
are
> the people I work with. It's just a hobby, like any other, done for
various
> reasons.
>
Hobbies are fine. However, I'd believe there is a better likelihood that
products will get brought to market at a high quality if someone is doing it
for something a little more tangible than the satisfaction someone gets from
their hobby.


>
> But there are a number of people who have developed Ada libraries for
free.

Never said there weren't. As a matter of fact, I've done that myself. (O.K.
I didn't put it out there under GPL, but I left a really strong hint about
just how easy it would be to get permission from me to use the libraries.)


> If there were a focus - some sort of standard - it could have been
> implemented by now. The problem's not really people's time in developing
it;
> it's getting a standard that the compiler people and the community will
put
> their support behind.
>
I'd agree that there are a number of people who might devote time to writing
some library. I was one of them and might be willing to do so again. I'd
agree that it would help if the compiler vendors said something to the
effect of "If someone writes something that looks like X and works half-way
well, I'll distribute it with my compiler." I just think that it would get
done a lot quicker and at a higher level of quality if the vendors said
"...And I'll write you a check for $X.XX if you do it..." Probably they
won't go for that, but if there were *some* way that the "volunteers" get
something out of it (besides the warm fuzzy feeling) I bet the odds of
getting it done and done well would go up. (Remember, there is a kind of
business benefit to be had by some potential participants - so it doesn't
necessarily have to be some financial transaction that creates the
incentive.)


>
> I can see how you could make $1,000,000 (though I find it highly
> unlikely) -- I don't see how you could make $20, if more than one person
> worked on it. Say John, Joesph, and Mohammad worked on. Who gets the
checks?
> What happens if (when) a check to someone doesn't show up in time? What is
> on time? How does everyone make sure it's getting split right? This can
get
> hairer - Oklahoman John, Ukrainian Jospeh and Iranian Mohammad. Money
> conversions; tariffs? If it's a million, we can hire a lawyer or
accountant
> part time to handle the money, for a few thousand dollars. If it's a $20
> here and there? Things can get hostile when money's involved, too.
>
No, I don't have illusions that somehow I'd make millions overnight because
I released a square-root subroutine under the ADCL. :-) My point has
consistently been that the ADCL holds out *some* hope of financial gain *if*
the software released under it is good enough to be useful to someone who
then wants to incorporate it in a product for sale.

All of those "what if" questions you ask are dealt with to some extent in
the articles by Dr. Leif. To the extent that they aren't dealt with - I
agree that they need to be dealt with. The ADCL is not a finished product -
it is a concept that is being kicked around and may ultimately emerge in
some form different from what I've seen so far. The fact that there are
questions and "what if" scenarios doesn't make it A Bad Thing. Go look back
at all the questions and "what ifs" that are discussed here and elsewhere
concerning the GPL.

>
> It's all a personal choice. Let me note, however, that there's a lot of
> shareware where the authors saw little to nothing from it, while there's a
> number of Open Source programmers who now make a living from their
> programming.
>
Sure an Open Source programmer can make a living from his work. No doubt. Go
look at the ACT programmers who are doing just that. And yes, there are lots
of people who have written some kind of softrware with the intention of
selling it for money (under a variety of license terms) and seen $0.00 from
their effort. It rather amounts to a big "So What?" Profit and loss are
going to be decided more by your business plan and your business skills than
by the license you use.

For some products, I can see how Open Source will make you a buck. If the
product is large enough and/or requires some significant level of support
and/or has some kind of value added products bundled with it that aren't
Open Source (manuals, packaging, telephone support, etc.) and/or priovides
an opportunity for consulting/education, then the business model may best be
served by putting the code under an Open Source license in order to get it
into the hands of as many people as is possible. However, I'd suspect that
some sort of semi-standard collection of utilities in the form of Ada source
libraries is not going to meet one or more of these criteria. If I put out a
megabyte of data structure code that is highly reliable and doesn't need
much explanation (and is maybe well documented?) it doesn't necessarily
afford the opportunity to take advantage of the other means of generating
revenue.

Would you hire a consultant to maintain a stable library of data structure
code or provide you with telephone support? (Unless I write really bad code!
:-) Maybe you'd hire a consultant to conduct some training in its proper
use, and/or *maybe* you'd shell out some money for a textbook/manual about
it, but probably not enough to generate a reasonable revenue stream that
would keep the writer interested in enhancing the product. In the mean time,
you might just take that megabyte of code and add your own megabyte of code
and suddenly have the next "Ms. Pacman" game craze that makes you a
billionaire and you might just send me a Thank You card for having provided
50% of your product development for you at no cost. :-)

>
> > It might get developed as another open source freebie or it might
> > get built "on spec"
>
> I don't understand the contrast here; some open source programs are
written
> to exact specification, and some proprietary applications ignore whatever
> standards whereever they feel like.
>
"On Spec" as in "On Speculation". I'm suggesting that someone might put
together a library of Ada stuff on speculation that they might be able to
find a way of making some money from its sale or support in some manner.


> > Don't forget that this is where a lot
> > of the "volunteer" labor comes from in groups like SIGAda - some
> businesses
> > think they have a vested interest in supporting the language, the
> standards,
> > the end products of working groups, the info/knowledge obtained at trade
> > shows, etc. As a result they send folks to these gigs and pay their
> salaries
> > and plane fair and hotels and let them have time to do the work needed.
> They
> > aren't doing it because it gives them warm fuzzy feelings! :-)
>
> Very true. But on the other hand, note the number of standards that just
got
> ignored. To the best of their knowledge, the GNU Pascal people are writing
> the first widely available compiler to handle Extended Pascal. Likewise,
> Unicode could have been some obscure standard, or a standard that
Microsoft
> "bought" (i.e. did most the work on, and is specialized for Microsoft
> systems.) But Unicode managed to get buy-in - W3C, IETF and other non-ISO
> standards organizations are including Unicode in their standards in a
major
> way, as are other ISO standards. A lot of people are pushing for better
> Unicode support, including a lot of Open Source people. Not because it's a
> standard that a few countries and companies thought they needed - because
> it's a standard that people think they need and people like. Without those
> people, your standard will go nowhere.
>

Not sure what standards have to do with it. I was suggesting that the people
who typically sign up for SIG committees and so forth have some modicum of
corporate support behind them. The corporate support is there because the
corporation perceives some business advantage to supporting a SIG.

If you are suggesting that a SIG may not be the best way to produce a
standard library of Ada tools because they'd have trouble standardizing it,
maybe you're right. I recall that the last attempt to produce a standard
library drifted because there wasn't a collective vision of what it should
be. Everybody had their own ideas of what it should include and how it
should look and it just never got to the point where enough of it gelled to
start moving towards an end product. (There were three of us who had the
notion that a statistics package would be a good place to start & I produced
one {with help!} that was tossed into the arena as a strawman, but it just
never grabbed enough interest to really get rolling. Maybe it is difficult
to do this sort of thing by committee and it should be left to a very small
handful of individuals with an end product coming out of the process that
can sink or swim based on how well it addresses everyone's needs?)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/