From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.0 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_40 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 29 Jul 93 04:31:38 GMT From: world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: The Mandate does apply to research software Message-ID: List-Id: Recently Mike posted some Air Force and Navy statements dictating how to implement the Ada Mandate, with all types of exceptions, and rather dubois use of life-cycle cost justifications. Be that as it may, look at what Congress originally said: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, after June 1, 1991, all Department of Defense software shall be written in the programming language Ada, in the absence of special exemption by an official designated by the Secretary of Defense." Both from a propositional and predicate logic point of view, and from the point of view of intepretation of Congressional regulations, the phrase "all DoD software" means just that - all DoD software. Now when Congress passed this, it was well aware that the DoD does much research (for example the funds that go to ARPA). So it's hard to conclude that when Congress was unaware of DoD software research when it passed the Mandate. Thus either the intent of Congress was for the Mandate to apply to DoD research and MIS stuff, as well as the embedded stuff, or somewhere in the Congressional minutes or appropriations papers, there is some language describing Congress's intent on how to implement the Mandate within the DoD, from which the Air Force and the Navy could have drawn their policy statements. I have never seen such language anywhere, and can only conclude that Congress wants the DoD to use Ada for everything, where cost-effective. Case in point. I recently posted an item about an Army Corp of Engineers software effort done in Fortran, some hydraulics engineering code. Now this was a new effort, started after the effort. Being an expert Ada-tran programmer, I know the Corps could have developed the program more cost effectively in Ada, by at least programming in Ada-tran, if not Ada itself. But they did not, and I assume didn't even bother to get a waiver. Yet this is the very type of project I believe Congress had in mind when drafting the Mandate. So until the Congress changes the wording of the Mandate, the Air Force and Navy (and Army and ARPA) policy statements are not valid enough to help programmers skirt the Mandate - they are still violating a federal law. Of course, this is a philosophical argument, since no one inside the DoD knows who is using what except for the largest of projects. Everything else is "don't tell, don't ask". -- ************************************************************************** Greg Aharonian Source Translation & Optimization P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178