Contributing patches to GPL Ada projects (was: Is Ada dead?)

[Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <l8g0c5nomd.fsf@berlin.int.act-europe.fr>, Emmanuel Briot <briot@gnat.com> writes:

> Now, something not related to you.  I see lots of people suggesting that we
> should have lots of Ada applications around to prove that Ada is not
> dead. However, as the co-author of several big packages that were released as
> open-source projects (GtkAda, GVD, XML/Ada, ada-mode for Emacs), I am sorry to
> say that we do not get a lot of patches (certainly less that equivalent C
> projects do).  We do fully appreciate the bug reports, and the few suggestions
> for enhancements, but that doesn't increase the time we have to develop the
> projects!
> 
> I don't know if this is related to the size of the Ada community, or simply a
> lack of a free-software culture in this Ada world, but it would certainly seem
> like the first nice step forward (contributing to existing Ada projects).

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.