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: 103376,7bcba1db9ed24fa7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-07-10 05:44:28 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!fr.usenet-edu.net!usenet-edu.net!wanadoo.fr!proxad.net!feeder2-1.proxad.net!nnrp5.proxad.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Sender: briot@berlin.int.act-europe.fr Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Contributing patches to GPL Ada projects (was: Is Ada dead?) References: From: Emmanuel Briot Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:44:25 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 213.228.58.169 X-Complaints-To: abuse@proxad.net X-Trace: nnrp5.proxad.net 994769065 213.228.58.169 (Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:44:25 CEST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:44:25 CEST Organization: Guest of ProXad - France Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9712 Date: 2001-07-10T12:44:25+00:00 List-Id: Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen) writes: > I think one factor is likely to be the great divide between "supported" > customers of ACT (who get GNAT quickly, in binary for their platform) > and everyone else. The "everyone else" are those most in a position > to contribute patches. > > It doesn't much matter if the rules are the same for those projects > as for GNAT, the perception is that ACT can fund all improvements > with revenues from the supported customers. No, this argument is incorrect for the projects I was speaking about (GtkAda, GVD, Xml/Ada). At least for the first two, the CVS tree is accessible to everyone read-only (provided of course they recompile their own version, we do not distribute daily binaries). It isn't the case yet for the third one, but then it is in a very early stage of development. I was also speaking of the ada-mode for Emacs. I am happy to report that I do get some patches for it (almost always from the same 3 or 4 persons, though). So everyone should be able to contribute, and see their patches integrated (or reviewed) into the CVS tree fast enough. I also agree that supported customers are not expected to send patches (they have their own projects to work on :-), and after all that's why they are paying a support contract. But other users certainly have their own needs, and cannot expect us to do the enhancements very fast (we simply don't have the time). That's when sending patches make sense. Instead of having to patch their own private version after every release of GVD, once their code is integrated into the official sources they do not need to maintain it anymore for each release. Thus, it saves time for them, and improves the product for everybody else in the world. Sounds like a win-win deal... And this is definitely the way other free-software projects work, even when there are companies behing them (Gnome/Simian, Linux/Redhat/Suze,.... ). ACT does fund some internal developments on the revenues from supported customers (after all, that's where GVD started, as well as several other tools). We also add enhancements requested by these supported customers. But if a non-supported user has needs, the best way to see them integrated is to try and submit patches :-) Emmanuel