Re: What about a glob standard method in Ada.Command_Line ?

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:29:07 +0200, <anon@att.net> a écrit:
> The reason is that first
> Adacore is the ONLY Ada vendor that has a current standard compiler
No, there are many other. This is just there do not choose to re-run the  
validation process (I suppose for financial reasons, I do not know the  
price at all).

The validation process requires that passed an amount of time, a compiler  
must be validated again. These other providers still own the exact version  
of their compiler which successfully passed the validation process. Above  
that, users of these compilers can them self run a particular ACAT test as  
they want, as this set of testes if publicly available.

The compiler vendor may do the same as well : running CAT testes on its  
product, without formally running a real validation (I still suppose for  
economical or timing reason).

The reason which make GNAT more visible than others, is the dual license :  
there is GNAT Pro and GNAT GPL (in short). Others has only commercial  
licenses. The other reason is that GNAT was originally funded by an  
university program. Others was not (and this helped GNAT a lot).

GNAT is more visible, but not a monopoly and does not seems to me to have  
any attempt to this way.

And some vendors, like SoftCheck, are unlikely to let this kind of thing  
occurs without shouting a bit I feel.


> Second, all other Ada vendors have decided not to upgrade their Ada
> compilers to the current standard.
Client matters. Although the latest version of the standard is Ada 2005,  
and the nearly born one is Ada 2012, big projects still ask for Ada 95,  
which is the most widely used Ada standard. Think of others using Ada 2005  
or 2012, as hider testers, pioneers, little companies with more  
flexibility, standalone users, students, and so on.

Other areas has other requirements, and many Ada providers just have these  
companies as clients.

> Some may start the upgrade but they
> are not fully Ada 2007 complaint!
Ada 207 ?

> So, the only active Ada vendor is
> Adacore, its just like IBM, is the only active vendor for PL/1.
No. Have a look at this:
http://www.adaic.org/compilers/comp-tool.html
and this:
http://www.adaic.org/links/tools.html

> Also,
> if you visit SGI, SUN, or others hardware/software companies who had
> there own Ada compiler back in the 1980 .. 1990s and look for a current
> version of the Ada compiler they will redirect you to Adacore's GNAT.
Lnks to some pages please ?

> So, Adacore has become a Monopoly legally, because others have chosen
> not to taken an active role in the Ada language any more by maintaining a
> current standard that is usable by the current systems. Yes, Randy  
> Brukardt
> from RRSoftware is a member of ARG but Janus Ada is Ada 95 only for Win
> 95/98. It might work under Windows 7 but how many people are going to buy
> the compiler just to find out because as we all know once open installed
> there's a no returns policy.
Randy may reply you better, but I would like to say that if RRSoftware do  
not provide an Ada compiler for other platform, this is not due to a  
supposed monopoly, this is simply because an Ada compiler is a lot of  
work, and RRSoftware may just have less people working on this.


> So, you either accept Adacore's GNAT "as is" or pay $15K plus to
Janus Ada is far less than $15K. If you want something cheaper, you have a  
choice. If you want to target other platform, like UNIXes, BSDs, embedded  
CPUs, you also have a choice.

> Adacore for support and have the right to talk about accepting your
> package as apart of the next standard.
Silly. Look at Ada issues, these are full of submissions from various  
peoples. Recently Jean-Pierre Rosen suggested I could send a submit a tiny  
proposition for the next standard. I am not at all a member of AdaCore.

> And for others on the list of
> WG9, they may vote but when Adacore, disagree, what are they going
> to do there is no other vendor to chose. So, aka Adacore rules Ada.
Were you present at one of their meeting to state that ?

Once again, look at Ada issues, and you will see:
http://ada-auth.org/ais.html

> And in the US to be a voting member of WG9 a sub of the ISO you must
> be a member of ANSI. Other countries have there own version of the
> standards process that sooner or later you will have to pay a annual
> fee.
You may have to pay fee to be member of some local standard office member.  
That is true, but this does not imply no body else can suggest this and  
that comment about the standard.

> Also, the voting member of WG9 are chosen by the national
> delegations of that country, and in the US that is Robert Dewar of
> AdaCore.
Do not know about that, so will not tell anything.

> All this means is that Adacore has too much control of Ada and the Ada
> Standards, for a language they did not create.
No. AdaCore is not under control of the standard, you did not demonstrated  
this.

Just look at the copyrights on the Ada 2005 standard:
http://www.adaic.org/standards/05rm/html/RM-TTL.html

> Some of the major member of WG9 (as of 2009):
> Note: Spark Ada (Ada vendor) is not on the list.
SPARK, an Ada vendor ? Are serious ?

>   Ada Vendors  -- ( to most the only votes that counts )
>     * Randall Brukardt  -- R.R. Software, Inc., USA
>     * Robert Dewar      -- AdaCore, USA
>     * Greg Gicca        -- AdaCore, USA
>     * Nasser Kettani    -- Rational Software France, France ( IBM )
>
>   Special Ada Interest
>     * Clyde Roby        -- Institute for Defense Analyses, USA (DoD)
>
>   Special Designer Interest
>     * Stephen Michell   -- Maurya Software, Inc. Canada
>                              (Secuity, SRG)
>     * Sally Seitz       -- ANSI, USA
>
>   12 Professors (Worldwide)
>   19 Others interested parties
>      *  Jean-Pierre Rosen   -- Adalog, france
>
You forget the ISO!

And your forget to mention all unknown peoples, [tiny|big] compagnies,  
hobbyst, students, who sent or will send their own comment to ada-auth.


-- 
* 3 lines of concise statements is readable, 10 pages of concise  
statements is unreadable ;
* 3 lines of verbose statements may looks unuseful, 10 pages of verbose  
statements will never looks too much pedantic