Re: Congress cutting budgets of SEI, IDA, MITRE

[agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!u]

In article <CBJryM.554@world.std.com>, srctran@world.std.com (Gregory
Aharonian) wrote:

[Reprint of article from the August 9, 1993 issue of Electronic Engineering
Times, page 22 outlining Congresses attempt to reduce funding for FFRDCs
deleted to save space]

>    Given that the software-related FFRDCs have shown no initiative in 
> raising and examining the issue critical to Ada's health

Which of your "issues" are you referring to?  I can only speak from my
experience at one of these FFRDCs (MITRE), but there many here that have
been involved with Ada both in the language development aspect and in it's
use for real systems.

> and the hypocrisy of its non-use inside the DoD, 

Are you saying that the FFRDCs are responsible for all (or even most) of
the DoD's non-use of Ada?  If so then there a re a number of fallicies with
this view.  MITRE is only an advisor to our customers: we don't make policy
decisions for the DoD, USAF, NASA, FAA, USA or any of our other customers. 
In addition, we cannot "butt into" a program: the customer has to ask for
our involvement and is ultimately free to accept or reject our
recommendations.   I'm sure that there are times when organizations within
MITRE have not been as forceful about using Ada on a program as they could
have been, but in my experience they have always been more forceful about
applying good system/software engineering principles than the other players
(e.g. the customer, acquirer, contractor, etc.)  I have never heard of any
situation where a contractor said that they wanted to develop portions of a
system in Ada v.s some other language, and MITRE disagreed.  Maybe its
happened somewhere, but I've only seen the opposite case.

> there will be some of us who loose no sleep seeing the FFRDCs shrunk.
>  Much of the raw data I have been posting (minus
> my obnoxious comments) should have been coming out of SEI, MITRE and IDA.

I guess what bothers me the most about these comments is the apparent
attitude that our funding should be cut because we haven't completely
adopted your agenda (whatever that is).

[rantings about SEI deleted]

>  Greg Aharonian                                      srctran@world.std.com
>  Source Translation & Optimization                            617-489-3727
>  P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

                       My opinions, not MITREs.
Kevin Miller
The MITRE Corporation
Bedford, Ma
kjmiller@mitre.org