Re: Ada and Mac (Was: New version of AppletMagic)

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Matt said

"They are in the commercial software business, so again, I can't blame them
for distancing themselves from the GPL.  Commercial shops and the Free
Software Foundation can happily coexist, not unlike commercial radio and,
say, NPR.  Paying for software isn't a moral issue.
"


Nor is paying for software or not paying for software what the FSF and
the idea of free software is about. As Richard Stallman has gone to pains
to point out on many occasions, the free in free software is about free
availability of the sources, and freedom to modify and distribute, it is
not about paying no money. Freeware where you can get the binary for $0
but not the sources is just as objectionable as expensive proprietary
software from this point of view, price is not the issue!

Note incidentally that free software and proprietary software can coexist
in many ways. Lots of people use GCC to build proprietary software, and
also many useful proprietary tools can be used in conjunction with gcc or
GNAT. Similarly, it is quite practical to embed GNAT in proprietary
visual IDE's. In particular, it would in fact be quite practical to
put GNAT into the Metroworks environment without any problems with
respect to the GPL (my information here comes from someone who works
closely with the company), but their lawyers are nervous (probably with
no justification whatsoever) about getting anywhere near GNAT. Fine that's
their problem, but please don't think there is any fundamental problem here.

We don't have much interest in persuing such a combination, since we don't
see a significant market place, but someone else who does see a marketplace
could certainly persue this. 

I think that this kind of combination is a more practical one than trying
to build a new Mac port from scratch, even with the Intermetrics front end.
After all, if it was so easy to build a Mac compiler with this front end,
wouldn't Intermetrics have done it, especially since they signed a contract
to do so. In practice there is still a LOT of work to be done, and clearly
Intermetrics decided at the time, working with AJPO, that this effort was
not worth while. Seeing as there were relatively few complaints about this
development, one could not be blamed for assuming that this decision was
not so unreasonable.

Building a new Ada 95 compiler, even if you use an existing front end
and an existing backend is not zero work. Putting out Object Ada was
not zero work, ask the TSP folks!

If you want a Mac version of Ada 95 with a nice command line free visual
environment, then by far the most practical route is to take either the
existing GNAT port, or the Intermetrics Java version, make as few changes
as possible to the core compiler technology, and work on embedding one of
these existing compilers in a nice environment. That approach could succeed
at reasonable cost (perhaps 1-2 person years of effort).

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies