RE: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

["Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com>]

Richard,
You have just explained a major problem US economy, executives who are
uneducated in technology.
Bob Leif

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org [mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]
On Behalf Of Richard Riehle
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 9:43 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New
Ada compiler for .NET)

Marin David Condic wrote:

> Of course, there is nothing to stop one from using Ada on a commercial
> RTOS - except for possibly finding a compiler that targets the board & the
> RTOS - and getting it at a reasonable price - and feeling comfortable that
> it will actually work without too many serious bugs

I remember the Ada project at Xerox where the team built the embedded
system for a copier using Ada, and did not need to buy a separate RTOS.
They used the one supplied by the Ada compiler publisher.  It was a
highly successful project and the team, along with its manager, realized
that Ada was a significant improvement over the way they had built
such systems before.

Xerox executives, with their customary skill at "grabbing defeat from the
jaws of victory" (Smalltalk, Windows Operating systems, etc.),  decreed
that Ada would not be allowed to be used for anymore systems.   This
decree was made even in the face of compelling success with it.

The project manager, in describing the project, remarked on the added
value that Ada provided in eliminating the need for purchasing stuff
such as VxWorks and related products.   Everything they needed was in
the Ada.

I see this kind of dumb management a lot in DoD contractor companies.
Somehow, these corporate level people are so enamoured of the slick
and glossy ads they fail to recognize quality when they see it.  Xerox
has been particularly guilty of this kind of glitz thinking when it comes
to computing.   They could own the marketplace now, if there had
been a well-functioning brain in the excecutive levels of the company
during the Seventies and Eighties.

Richard Riehle