Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Hyman Rosen wrote:

> Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote:
> 
>> I am very interested in doing applications myself. The problem is that
>> I want to do them strictly in Ada95, for all the reasons we know and
>> love. So right now, my time is spent building up a series of important
>> language bindings, one of which is APQ.
> 
> Thereby demonstrating exactly the problem that Ernie Ball was talking
> about - programmers like to do programmer things, and that's what they'll
> do unless they're paid to do otherwise.

I can tell you with all honesty, that I _didn't want_ to
write this binding. But the closest thing to a PostgreSQL
binding that I could find, were packages/bindings that were
sadly lacking, and made Ada applications program at the
"C level".

GNADE is great for what it is, but IMHO it is a large
amount of infrastructure, which can be problematic to install.
Just try installing it on FreeBSD for example, or worse,
a FreeBSD Dec Alpha. I want users of my application to not have
to go through a help desk to "get there". A simpler solution
needed to exist.

So I was forced to scratch that itch.

So while you might see this as "unnecessary", I don't agree. I have
applications in mind, but I cannot get there until I have the
necessary building blocks that I need.

> Also, programmers know how to do programmer things, but not necessarily
> other things. And the people who know how to do the other things aren't
> necessarily programmers. That's why you don't get much free software in
> non-programmer areas.

There is some truth to this, but I can't agree with this
wholesale. Not many programmers do kernels and servers in
their day job. Most (probably non-Ada) programmers are doing
mundane things like the Accounting systems and such (perhaps
this is the problem ;-). So I don't buy the argument that the
know how is lacking, only that the desire to do this may be
lacking.

Certainly on the Ada front, there is much needed for general
purpose applications. Ada is quite suitable for embedded
applications, but the Annexes are hardly enough for commercial
use (once again, I repeat that you cannot even get the day
of the week from the Ada.Calendar package, for example).

So while it is easy to be critical, some of us are actually
contributing our time freely here, to help make a difference.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg