From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,e60fe41dcabc5f5d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: GNAT 3.03 for OS/2 Date: 1996/03/25 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 144312131 references: <4iufbc$cj9@twonky.btv.ibm.com> <4j6756$knt@twonky.btv.ibm.com> organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-03-25T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: I have a few complaints about the tough situation with OS/2 and GNAT. My impression is that ACT is foot-dragging in order for IBM to be persuaded to fund development of GNAT for OS/2 and AIX. I don't blame ACT for giving priority to paying customers. But I do blame them for not effectively promoting the use of GNAT to the bulk of professional OS/2 developers. We are not foot dragging at all. We estimate the probability of IBM funding development of GNAT for OS/2 (AIX is another matter entirely) to be zero. We keep the OS/2 version alive really only because I use it, and historically it was the version required by the DoD contract. A company spends its promotional energy where it thinks results will be obtained. We have very limited resources. In June of '95, I attempted to have GNAT distributed on the CD-ROM's with the IBM Developer Connection for OS/2. I contacted the people at IBM and hooked them up with Robert Dewar who officially took over from there. IBM was very interested in getting GNAT distributed on their CD's and even contacted me several more times until September. IBM wants to see an OS/2 environment that can be used for either PowerPC or Intel machines. I suggested GNAT Ada 95 to them. Actually we persued this, but mutually agreed that we could not make the very tight release schedule for some particular version of the IBM Developer Connection CD ROM. We also agreed that they would contact us again for the subsequent release. We have not heard a thing from them. Yes I suppose we could go and track them down, but frankly it is not clear that IBM is really energetically promoting OS/2 at this stage themselves! There was one catch: the owner of the copyrights to GNAT had to sign a standard release form. At that time, the copyrights were held by several University entities. This is uninformed speculation. This was not, and has never been a problem! Now how tough is it for ACT to sign the IBM forms and send a recent copy of GNAT for OS/2 to the Developer Connection staff? In my opinion, Robert Dewar is being too picky by holding-off on the OS/2 releases. The subscribers to IBM DEVCON are exactly the people to reach in order to promote Ada 95 for OS/2 and AIX. If ACT really wanted OS/2 and AIX customers other than IBM, then ACT would've moved by now to access the subscribers of DEVCON. Not tough at all. If IBM gets in touch with us as they promised to do, we will be glad to cooperate with them. We are not "holding off" on the OS/2 releases, it is just that the OS/2 release is highly non-standard, requires a lot of special fiddling each time, and is rather low on the priority list, so it takes a while to get around to it. We are hoping to get a 3.04 out in the forseeable future, but we can't promise anything. Please don't assume that we are deliberately holding back OS/2 releases, far from it! Since I use no other version, I would certainly be as happy as anyone to have my version properly sychronized with the official release. I'm a non-paying customer of ACT and I must admit I'm unable to effectively do anything more except complain in order to get GNAT into the hands of OS/2 developers. Actually, you could perfectly well take on the packaging up of new releases if you want to, no one has a monopoly on this. Many of the unsupported ports are maintained by volunteers for that matter. You could also send the stuff off to IBM for that matter. Remember that we do not own the copyright on GNAT any more than you do, so it is no easier for us to deal with the copyright release than it would be for you (the copyright is assigned to the FSF). One thing to understand is that are first priority is to get releases to our customers. Sometimes people are under the false impression that the GPL requires us to make general releases. It does not, the GPL only says that if we release, we have to release with sources. ACT chooses to make public binary versions availale of all the ports we can, but these public releases are not our highest priority item, and this is especially true for ports in which there is very little commercial interest. We will certainly try to make an OS/2 3.04 as soon as possible, but we cannot promise any definite time table. Incidentally, when we use the term customer, like any other business, we mean paying customers. The two kinds of GNAT users who catch our attention are commercial customers, and those who contribute to the GNAT effort by volunteer work. We are happy that many others can make good use of GNAT, but you have to remember that the continued development and improvement of GNAT depends on giving our customers good service! Finally, John, I appreciate you making the contact with IBM for the developers connection. Too bad that the time scale was just too tight when IBM first made contact. It is a pity that IBM has not followed up on sending us the material for a future release.