Re: Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board?

["Juha Valimaki" <juha.valimaki@xdsloy.com>]

"Robert Dewar" <dewar@gnat.com> wrote in message
news:5ee5b646.0208231819.981a776@posting.google.com...
> We think that it very much helps all segments of the Ada market to have a
> high quality Ada compiler that students, hobbyists, and indidual
> enthusiastic engineers can access.
>

If some kind of proof is needed why small markets _need_ every customer look
at it this way:
X is number of people using free tools
Y is number of people using low end commercial tools
Z is number of people using high end commercial tools

X+Y+Z is the group of all Ada users. If you take away the free tools then N%
of group X will buy a tool. N%*X+Y+Z > Y+Z, if N>0. Note however: Y+Z is
likely to be smaller than X+Y+Z, but the market will be larger in terms of
money!.

> If there is a viable business in providing low cost products to small
> development teams, then someone should by all means step in, but
> please don't expect Ada Core Technologies to serve all needs of the Ada
> community. We can't and we won't try.
>

For me it seems you are afraid that low end solutions would eat up your
revenue and that Ada would be used more in general purpose programs that
don't focus on mission critical code, which seems to be your main focus.
That's a perfectly legal reason to suppress competition :-)

I really believe Ada tool vendors would understand that there has to be some
way for people to try Ada and do research without large cost. There are
already good solutions for that: Institutions get tools usually for (almost)
free and demo/limited versions help new users to start coding.

> Robert Dewar
> Ada Core Technologies

Juha

BTW: Low end is relative, for many hobby users $500 may max price, but I
think many small companies would easily pay $2000-$4000 per developer (PER
DEVELOPER is the key here).

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