Re: Proving Correctness (was Java Portability)

["David Starner" <dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org>]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote in
message news:9kpq82$otf$1@nh.pace.co.uk...
> Are you speaking for ACT?

No. I merely note that their past history does not indicate them using
programs under the ADCL.

However, the public release of GNAT is done by Robert Dewar for the Free
Software Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation has made their opinion
on the matter more than clear. Not only will their version of GNAT not
include these libraries, it should not even mention them, as not to give
publicity to non-free software.

> > I find that somewhat insulting; there are 400 Debian developers
(including
> > me) who are putting together an operating system for no monetary
> > compensation, and I can tell you that few of us are saints.
> >
> Well don't presume I meant to call you a fool. Presume I meant to call you
a
> saint.

The problem is, I'm not a saint, and I'm not really a fool, and neither are
the people I work with. It's just a hobby, like any other, done for various
reasons.

> As a result,
> there aren't a huge supply of folks beating down the doors begging ACT,
> Aonix, Rational, Averstar, et alia, if they could *please* work for them
for
> free developing a collection of Ada libraries. (If there are, maybe they
> could direct the extras over to my house where they can mow my lawn. :-)

But there are a number of people who have developed Ada libraries for free.
If there were a focus - some sort of standard - it could have been
implemented by now. The problem's not really people's time in developing it;
it's getting a standard that the compiler people and the community will put
their support behind.

> Well, maybe it makes some money and maybe it doesn't. Maybe it only makes
> $20 or maybe it makes $1,000,000.

I can see how you could make $1,000,000 (though I find it highly
unlikely) -- I don't see how you could make $20, if more than one person
worked on it. Say John, Joesph, and Mohammad worked on. Who gets the checks?
What happens if (when) a check to someone doesn't show up in time? What is
on time? How does everyone make sure it's getting split right? This can get
hairer - Oklahoman John, Ukrainian Jospeh and Iranian Mohammad. Money
conversions; tariffs? If it's a million, we can hire a lawyer or accountant
part time to handle the money, for a few thousand dollars. If it's a $20
here and there? Things can get hostile when money's involved, too.

> If I'm going to put the software out there anyway, why not reserve some
> limited right to earn something from it? It would still be out there with
> source code available for all the hackers and students and
garage-start-ups
> and big corporations to use at no charge. They're still getting that same
> "free ride" they'd get with GPLed code, right? But if someone goes out and
> turns it into a product, the authors aren't left out in the cold without
so
> much as a thank-you note.

It's all a personal choice. Let me note, however, that there's a lot of
shareware where the authors saw little to nothing from it, while there's a
number of Open Source programmers who now make a living from their
programming.

> Well, I think one of the reasons that the last effort to build a library
> collapsed was that nobody owned the project and nobody saw their own
> interest being directly benefited by working on it sufficiently to make it
> worth pressing hard to get it done.

True. As a general rule, open source projects done by volunteers either have
one big leader (OpenBSD, Linux, most small programs) or have enough inertia
to form a volunteer group (Linux (it's not Linus driven anymore), Debian,
Apache) - and most the later started out as the first. Getting one person
who cares enough to pull the project through and who can command the respect
of the people is important.

> My guess is that the compiler vendors could spur something along because
> they have an interest in such a facility. If they formed up some sort of
> committee and agreed on some requirements & scope, at least someone (or
some
> group) would have a clear direction to go in and a ready community of
> customers.

That would certainly help.

> It might get developed as another open source freebie or it might
> get built "on spec"

I don't understand the contrast here; some open source programs are written
to exact specification, and some proprietary applications ignore whatever
standards whereever they feel like.

> Don't forget that this is where a lot
> of the "volunteer" labor comes from in groups like SIGAda - some
businesses
> think they have a vested interest in supporting the language, the
standards,
> the end products of working groups, the info/knowledge obtained at trade
> shows, etc. As a result they send folks to these gigs and pay their
salaries
> and plane fair and hotels and let them have time to do the work needed.
They
> aren't doing it because it gives them warm fuzzy feelings! :-)

Very true. But on the other hand, note the number of standards that just got
ignored. To the best of their knowledge, the GNU Pascal people are writing
the first widely available compiler to handle Extended Pascal. Likewise,
Unicode could have been some obscure standard, or a standard that Microsoft
"bought" (i.e. did most the work on, and is specialized for Microsoft
systems.) But Unicode managed to get buy-in - W3C, IETF and other non-ISO
standards organizations are including Unicode in their standards in a major
way, as are other ISO standards. A lot of people are pushing for better
Unicode support, including a lot of Open Source people. Not because it's a
standard that a few countries and companies thought they needed - because
it's a standard that people think they need and people like. Without those
people, your standard will go nowhere.

--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
"The pig -- belongs -- to _all_ mankind!" - Invader Zim