* Only one Ada vendor? @ 2007-10-19 15:05 Sloan.Kohler 2007-10-20 0:49 ` Randy Brukardt ` (5 more replies) 0 siblings, 6 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Sloan.Kohler @ 2007-10-19 15:05 UTC (permalink / raw) Its Friday - thought I would try to stir things up... Several people have stated that "Ada" refers to the latest approved version (i.e., Ada => "Ada 2005"). Its been well over a year since AdaCore announced Ada 2005 support started shipping a pretty complete implementation. As far as I know, no other vendor has yet announced any intention to support the current standard. Maybe they're working on it in secrecy. Maybe they are waiting on customer demand. Maybe they have already lost most of their customers to AdaCore and simply don't care anymore. Whatever the case, I'm concerned that the number of viable Ada vendors seems to be shrinking. The benefits of language standardization are greatly diminished if only one vendor bothers to support the standard. I have no relationship to AdaCore other than being a supported customer who is very happy with their support and their business model (i.e. they sell support, not license keys). Their "build it and they will come" approach to product development and attracting customers seems to work well. I'm aware that Aonix and DDC-I have had some recent Ada related product announcements. That's a good thing but still no public indication that they're working on Ada 2005 support. At least its still possible to find Ada products featured on the Aonix, DDC-I, and Green Hills web pages. I'm upset/disappointed by what IBM has done to Apex since taking over Rational several years ago. Apex was (& still is) an excellent, full featured (though costly) Ada development environment. Since IBM took over it seems that Apex product development has completely stagnated while they focus on collecting license maintenance fees from legacy customers who are in too deep to switch compilers. They also allowed the same thing to happen with ClearCase - ClearCase users are switching to Subversion for configuration management. Its not nearly as capable as ClearCase but its good enough and can be deployed without buying licenses. If Apex and ClearCase were marketed with an open-source, support focused business model (instead of a license fee focused business model) I'm convinced they would have a lot more success in the market. So we need to have more than one Ada vendor to keep Ada viable but I don't have hope that anyone else can effectively compete with AdaCore unless they adopt a similar business model. -- Sloan ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-19 15:05 Only one Ada vendor? Sloan.Kohler @ 2007-10-20 0:49 ` Randy Brukardt 2007-10-20 2:08 ` Nasser Abbasi ` (4 subsequent siblings) 5 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Randy Brukardt @ 2007-10-20 0:49 UTC (permalink / raw) <Sloan.Kohler@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1192806306.892546.73350@q5g2000prf.googlegroups.com... > Its Friday - thought I would try to stir things up... > > Several people have stated that "Ada" refers to the latest approved > version (i.e., Ada => "Ada 2005"). Its been well over a year since > AdaCore announced Ada 2005 support started shipping a pretty complete > implementation. As far as I know, no other vendor has yet announced > any intention to support the current standard. Maybe they're working > on it in secrecy. Maybe they are waiting on customer demand. Maybe > they have already lost most of their customers to AdaCore and simply > don't care anymore. > > Whatever the case, I'm concerned that the number of viable Ada vendors > seems to be shrinking. The benefits of language standardization are > greatly diminished if only one vendor bothers to support the standard. I agree. I do know that there are multiple vendors (at least three) working on the Amendment features, because they have given me feedback on the ACATS tests that are in development. All of three of the vendors have pointed out enough test errors that I think it is unlikely that they did so by hand (my own experience with creating/editing the tests without a viable compiler was that finding errors was extremely difficult -- only a few errors were detected that way). The ACAA has confidentiality rules, so I can't say more. Personally, I think what you are seeing is mostly an unwillingness to promise something whose scope is not yet clear -- and may not have a strong demand from their customers. That's certainly the case with Janus/Ada; we've been doing some work on the new stuff, but it is a middle priority task. Randy Brukardt, man of many hats. :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-19 15:05 Only one Ada vendor? Sloan.Kohler 2007-10-20 0:49 ` Randy Brukardt @ 2007-10-20 2:08 ` Nasser Abbasi 2007-10-20 7:39 ` Simon Wright 2007-10-21 17:23 ` Martin Krischik ` (3 subsequent siblings) 5 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Nasser Abbasi @ 2007-10-20 2:08 UTC (permalink / raw) Hello; <Sloan.Kohler@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1192806306.892546.73350@q5g2000prf.googlegroups.com... > Its Friday - thought I would try to stir things up... > .... >Since IBM took over it seems that Apex product development has completely >stagnated while they focus on collecting license maintenance >fees from >legacy customers who are in too deep to switch compilers. But one of the whole marks of Ada is that it is so much a standardized language that one could compile Ada code with any conforming Ada compiler and this should never cause a problem? If this was say C or C++ code full of #ifdefs and each C compiler having its own set of a million different compiler switches I would understand, but Ada code? So I am just curious why would it be hard to "switch" Ada compilers? Nasser ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-20 2:08 ` Nasser Abbasi @ 2007-10-20 7:39 ` Simon Wright 2007-10-21 20:57 ` Florian Weimer 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Simon Wright @ 2007-10-20 7:39 UTC (permalink / raw) "Nasser Abbasi" <nma@12000.org> writes: > If this was say C or C++ code full of #ifdefs and each C compiler > having its own set of a million different compiler switches I would > understand, but Ada code? So I am just curious why would it be hard > to "switch" Ada compilers? Application code is very likely to depend on compiler-specific extensions and support packages; eg GNAT's 'Unrestricted_Access and GNAT.Sockets. You might say 'so make your own socket binding', but our experience is that that will support an imperfect subset of the underlying library; for example, not providing TCP_NODELAY. Another pressure is the need to avoid re-certification. We have strong resistance to upgrading the version of GNAT we use in case it affects application behaviour. And remember many of the projects that might switch will be in long-term maintenance; if there's a complete set of unit tests it would be less of a risk, but that can be a big IF. --S ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-20 7:39 ` Simon Wright @ 2007-10-21 20:57 ` Florian Weimer 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Florian Weimer @ 2007-10-21 20:57 UTC (permalink / raw) * Simon Wright: > "Nasser Abbasi" <nma@12000.org> writes: > >> If this was say C or C++ code full of #ifdefs and each C compiler >> having its own set of a million different compiler switches I would >> understand, but Ada code? So I am just curious why would it be hard >> to "switch" Ada compilers? > > Application code is very likely to depend on compiler-specific > extensions and support packages; eg GNAT's 'Unrestricted_Access and > GNAT.Sockets. And compiler-specific time behavior of the run-time library. If you move an application which uses Ada.Strings.Unbounded heavily to a compiler whose run-time library supports only a single-character Append operation whose run-time is proportional to the string length, performance might be completely unacceptable. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-19 15:05 Only one Ada vendor? Sloan.Kohler 2007-10-20 0:49 ` Randy Brukardt 2007-10-20 2:08 ` Nasser Abbasi @ 2007-10-21 17:23 ` Martin Krischik 2007-10-21 17:33 ` Gary Scott ` (2 more replies) 2007-10-25 9:33 ` llothar ` (2 subsequent siblings) 5 siblings, 3 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Martin Krischik @ 2007-10-21 17:23 UTC (permalink / raw) Sloan.Kohler@gmail.com wrote: > Its Friday - thought I would try to stir things up... > > Several people have stated that "Ada" refers to the latest approved > version (i.e., Ada => "Ada 2005"). Its been well over a year since > AdaCore announced Ada 2005 support started shipping a pretty complete > implementation. As far as I know, no other vendor has yet announced > any intention to support the current standard. Maybe they're working > on it in secrecy. Maybe they are waiting on customer demand. Maybe > they have already lost most of their customers to AdaCore and simply > don't care anymore. The funny thing is: The is only one C and C++ vendor which *fully* supports C 99 and C++ 2003. Perhaps full standart compliance is out of fashion :-( . Martin -- mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net Ada programming at: http://ada.krischik.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-21 17:23 ` Martin Krischik @ 2007-10-21 17:33 ` Gary Scott 2007-10-21 19:42 ` Maciej Sobczak 2007-10-21 23:57 ` Robert A Duff 2 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Gary Scott @ 2007-10-21 17:33 UTC (permalink / raw) Martin Krischik wrote: > Sloan.Kohler@gmail.com wrote: > > >>Its Friday - thought I would try to stir things up... >> >>Several people have stated that "Ada" refers to the latest approved >>version (i.e., Ada => "Ada 2005"). Its been well over a year since >>AdaCore announced Ada 2005 support started shipping a pretty complete >>implementation. As far as I know, no other vendor has yet announced >>any intention to support the current standard. Maybe they're working >>on it in secrecy. Maybe they are waiting on customer demand. Maybe >>they have already lost most of their customers to AdaCore and simply >>don't care anymore. > > > The funny thing is: The is only one C and C++ vendor which *fully* supports > C 99 and C++ 2003. Perhaps full standart compliance is out of fashion :-( . Definitely not the case for Fortran. Standard compliance is very high on the list of vendors. It does take a while for the changes to be rolled in though, more so when there are fairly massive changes to the standard. > > Martin > -- Gary Scott mailto:garylscott@sbcglobal dot net Fortran Library: http://www.fortranlib.com Support the Original G95 Project: http://www.g95.org -OR- Support the GNU GFortran Project: http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/index.html If you want to do the impossible, don't hire an expert because he knows it can't be done. -- Henry Ford ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-21 17:23 ` Martin Krischik 2007-10-21 17:33 ` Gary Scott @ 2007-10-21 19:42 ` Maciej Sobczak 2007-10-21 23:57 ` Robert A Duff 2 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Maciej Sobczak @ 2007-10-21 19:42 UTC (permalink / raw) On 21 Pa , 19:23, Martin Krischik <krisc...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote: > The funny thing is: The is only one C and C++ vendor which *fully* supports > C 99 and C++ 2003. Perhaps full standart compliance is out of fashion :-( . It is not the issue of fashion, but rather demand - with no demand there is obviously no pressure to spend resources to implement it. Apparently there is no demand for *all* language features, which might be a proof that some of them were defined over-eagerly. A lesson to learn for language designers. -- Maciej Sobczak * www.msobczak.com * www.inspirel.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-21 17:23 ` Martin Krischik 2007-10-21 17:33 ` Gary Scott 2007-10-21 19:42 ` Maciej Sobczak @ 2007-10-21 23:57 ` Robert A Duff 2007-10-22 12:36 ` Georg Bauhaus 2 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Robert A Duff @ 2007-10-21 23:57 UTC (permalink / raw) Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net> writes: > The funny thing is: The is only one C and C++ vendor which *fully* supports > C 99 and C++ 2003. Which vendor is that? Which vendors "mostly" support C 99? Just curious... To be on-topic for comp.lang.ada, I'll say: the latest GNAT fully supports Ada 2005 (modulo some bugs). Other Ada vendors are adding Ada 2005 features incrementally, based on customer demand, which seems pretty reasonable. - Bob ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-21 23:57 ` Robert A Duff @ 2007-10-22 12:36 ` Georg Bauhaus 2007-10-22 20:55 ` Maciej Sobczak 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Georg Bauhaus @ 2007-10-22 12:36 UTC (permalink / raw) On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 19:57 -0400, Robert A Duff wrote: > Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net> writes: > > > The funny thing is: The is only one C and C++ vendor which *fully* supports > > C 99 and C++ 2003. > > Which vendor is that? http://www.comeaucomputing.com The error messages look suspiciously similar to those emitted by the Intel C++ compiler. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-22 12:36 ` Georg Bauhaus @ 2007-10-22 20:55 ` Maciej Sobczak 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Maciej Sobczak @ 2007-10-22 20:55 UTC (permalink / raw) On 22 Pa , 14:36, Georg Bauhaus <rm.tsoh+bauh...@maps.futureapps.de> wrote: > http://www.comeaucomputing.com > > The error messages look suspiciously similar to those > emitted by the Intel C++ compiler. Both get their compiler front-ends from EDG (www.edg.com). -- Maciej Sobczak * www.msobczak.com * www.inspirel.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-19 15:05 Only one Ada vendor? Sloan.Kohler ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2007-10-21 17:23 ` Martin Krischik @ 2007-10-25 9:33 ` llothar 2007-10-25 9:58 ` Ludovic Brenta 2007-10-25 20:35 ` adaworks 2007-10-28 5:44 ` anon 5 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: llothar @ 2007-10-25 9:33 UTC (permalink / raw) > without buying licenses. If Apex and ClearCase were marketed with an > open-source, support focused business model (instead of a license fee > focused business model) I'm convinced they would have a lot more > success in the market. I don't believe. Way to many people think that all can be payed by support but this is simply not the truth. Especially for a development environment i can't really see any successfull business model - and i don't see to much of it (Elicpse is a total different beast) all others pay for an IDE/compiler. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-25 9:33 ` llothar @ 2007-10-25 9:58 ` Ludovic Brenta 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Ludovic Brenta @ 2007-10-25 9:58 UTC (permalink / raw) llothar <llothar@web.de> writes: >> without buying licenses. If Apex and ClearCase were marketed with an >> open-source, support focused business model (instead of a license fee >> focused business model) I'm convinced they would have a lot more >> success in the market. > > I don't believe. Way to many people think that all can be payed by > support but this is simply not the truth. Especially for a > development environment i can't really see any successfull business > model - and i don't see to much of it (Elicpse is a total different > beast) all others pay for an IDE/compiler. The last time I paid for an IDE and compiler was, I think, in 1993. Since then I've only ever used Free Software. I pay for it by donating time to enhance said Free Software. My current employer purchased licenses for Rational Apex and also paid for support. After a few years, they became dissatisfied with the quality of the support and did not renew the maintenance contract. Eventually they switched to GNAT Pro and now they only pay for support. The main driving factor for this switch were (1) support and (2) combined cost of licenses and support. -- Ludovic Brenta. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-19 15:05 Only one Ada vendor? Sloan.Kohler ` (3 preceding siblings ...) 2007-10-25 9:33 ` llothar @ 2007-10-25 20:35 ` adaworks 2007-10-28 5:44 ` anon 5 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: adaworks @ 2007-10-25 20:35 UTC (permalink / raw) <Sloan.Kohler@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1192806306.892546.73350@q5g2000prf.googlegroups.com... > > Whatever the case, I'm concerned that the number of viable Ada vendors > seems to be shrinking. The benefits of language standardization are > greatly diminished if only one vendor bothers to support the standard. > It is certainly not in the best interest of the language for there to be only one compiler option. However, the economics of Ada seem to govern the support it receives from compiler publishers. With the apparent decline in the number of Ada projects worldwide, and the atttitude among some of the most influential DoD contractors that Ada usage is deprecated in favor of C++ and Java, where is the incentive for Ada compiler vendors and tool builders. Ada continues to be a superior language design for most kinds of software, but the lack of interfaces to common environments and operating systems, the lack of tools, and the absence of a customer (e.g., the DoD) with an interest in the language contributes to its decline as an option. My role for the last few years has put me closer to the DoD decision-makers, and I continue to encounter the widespread opinion that Ada is no longer of interest. There are, of course, more intelligent, better informed people in the DoD and they understand the importance of Ada in weapon systems development. But, increasingly, the language is not even in the repertoire of anyone who graduated from a computer science program in the last fifteen or so years. When Lockheed-Martin took the ridiculous decision to abandon Ada in favor of C++ for some of our key weapon systems, the economic incentive for building Ada compilers and tools declined substantially. The people who made this decision were generally pretty ignorant about Ada. However, the decision was made, to a large extent, on the perceived cost of using the language -- training, compiler licensing, support contracts -- not just a result of their monumental stupidity about the benefits of the language. I attended a video-telecast briefing to DoD software professionals a few years ago that was delivered by a then prominent Navy Admiral. At one point during his talk he came to, "And now let me say a few words about Ada." He went on to lament the experience of Ada and praise the fact that, with the abandomment of the mandate, "we can now put that disaster behind us..." His version of the Ada story included derision of the language including citing a few "...amusing if they were not so serious ..." issues with the language. "We hired the best instructors we could for the Academy [USNA] and even they couldn't get anyone to understand the language ..." My quotes are from memory, but pretty close. By the time he got through with his assessment of Ada, anyone in the teleconference who knew nothing of Ada would have been completely turned-off by it. We someone need to get Ada on the scoreboard again. We need some kind of education process to correct the misinformation about it that is so widespread. There was a time when I thought this was a responsibility of the Ada compiler publishers and tool developers. Now, I realize that those most of those compiler publishers (e.g., IBM-Rational) don't care whether Ada continues to exist or not. They will continue to make money without Ada. So, where does the educational process originate? Who has the deep-pockets necessary to make it happen. The money wasted on meaningless advertising after the advent of Ada 95 is a lesson learned. No one wants to hear how good it is. In the minds of most software professionals, Java is just as good, or good enough. One major weapon system development is using so-called "real-time" Java instead of Ada. My objections are perceived as the ranting of an Ada bigot. They humor me, though, instead of deriding me. Where is the flurry of articles and press releases in the computer press and the general press about the new ISO standard Ada 2005? No where I have looked. Who has written a good article about Ada 2005 for any DoD publication? Not very many. Where are the books on Ada 2005? Only one that I know of. I had hoped to update Ada Distilled for 2005 standard by now, but Ada is now a very small fraction of my time and I simply don't write Ada code day-by-day as I did ten years ago. Even so, I still get email about Ada Distilled. Very little of it is from U.S. or European correspondents, but from other places in the world. I even received an invitation to teach from it in Tehran (which I declined). Apparently, they are using Ada for something or other in Iran. I have no idea what they are doing with Ada in Iran, but it was interesting to learn of their interest. We need to get Ada visible again. It is not useful that Ariane V was programmed in Ada and that it keeps getting brought up as an example of a weakness in the language. We need to get information to the computer professionals about the successes of the language. We need to get high-profile projects made public. And we need more articles in the press about its successes, and about Ada 2005. I had a very good initiative started using JGNAT at NPS, where I am now teaching. The enthusiasm ran high, and a success with JGNAT could have reversed a lot of the attitudes among the faculty. AdaCore withdrew support for JGNAT, and it turned out to be inadequate for the purpose we intended. AdaCore might have been able to fix the problem, but chose, because of economic considerations, to abandon it entirely. I can report that the incentive to use an Ada-based tool vanished very quickly among those faculty members who were originally enthusiastic about JGNAT. This is similar, in some respects to the DoD's decision to abandon Ada right after the advent of Ada 95. "Abandon?" No. That was not the intent of Secretary Paige's memo. But that was the interpretation within the DoD. At the time, I wrote in my JOOP Column that it was a lot like "grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory," not an original phrase, but appropriate, I thought. I continue to believe that Ada is the correct choice for most of the software we include in safety-critical and weapon systems design. However, I am a person of little influence. I no longer have a voice in the press, and I am constrained by what I can say in the military community. If no one takes up the challenge to educate the public and the computing community, and if we continue to simply rely on the more intelligent customers making the choice of Ada instead of being more proactive, the language is certainly doomed to extinction. As of the present, I see no one making an effective case for Ada. A few trade shows will not make it happen. We need a more pronounced effort. Richard Riehle ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-19 15:05 Only one Ada vendor? Sloan.Kohler ` (4 preceding siblings ...) 2007-10-25 20:35 ` adaworks @ 2007-10-28 5:44 ` anon 2007-10-28 8:04 ` Pascal Obry 2007-10-28 11:13 ` Jerry van Dijk 5 siblings, 2 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: anon @ 2007-10-28 5:44 UTC (permalink / raw) Note: The ISO consider Ada 2007 specification (Adopted Jan 2007) to be an "Ada 95 Amendments 1" only. But It is still "Ada 95" as the parent specification. There are many reason that you can say "One Ada vendor" and that is GNAT. Any one can take a few movements come up with a lot of reasons and most of those will be true in one respect or another. But to start with is that GNAT is to most not a true Ada compiler. It is an "Experimental" and "Educational" Ada compiler only. Adacore has not tried to make it a standard compiler. The reason people say this is that before the 2005 specification were adopted in Jan. 2007, Adacore had pre-released a compiler that had most if not all of the 2005 features in 2004 and though 2006. This alone make the GNAT compiler "Experimental". Also, no standard Ada or other language compiler would allow obsolete features to exist in the current version. No matter what! They would have two compilers one with the old standard or outdate features and the second current standard only. An example of this is "pragma No_Run_Time" which is not a standard Ada pragma or a current feature listed in the GNAT manual. It is listed in the obsolete section of the GNAT manual, but it still work. Also business like standards and those who abide by those standards. Adacore with pre-releases of Ada specification does not meet the business needs for those standards. Then with Adacore also saying they are the leader in Ada, that scare off outside business from using Ada. The price tag of $14_000 per year for GNAT PRO hurts as well. Most Ada compilers are less than 10% of that with a 30 to 90 day free support included. With extended yearly support optional to buy if and when needed. And for their own reasons businesses prefer to buy software instead on downloading for free. In both of the previous two reason Adacore has done more to "KILL" the Ada language than promote it. The other companies like Janus or Green-Hills have not adopted the Ada 2005. On one of their product web pages it states that they would not follow GNAT and create a first Amendments to Ada 95 compiler, they will wait until a true and complete specification was adopted. In other words a specification that was not controlled by GNAT. Then there the supply and demand reason. Since there is little demand for Ada the companies will would prefer to use their resources on other languages that are in demand. Then there is the anti-government reason. To most people Ada is still tied to US government (direct link stopped in 1998). So, if you hate the US government you do not use Ada. In the world, this is a "BIG ONE"! Some have said that other vendors are starting to make updates. Well I will believe it when they have the product available until then there is only one Ada vendor for Ada 2007. As for Ada 95 its has drop a few but they are still around 40+ vendors. I was not going to reply to this post but with a couple of people cutting me down again. I said what the hell! In <1192806306.892546.73350@q5g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, Sloan.Kohler@gmail.com writes: >Its Friday - thought I would try to stir things up... > >Several people have stated that "Ada" refers to the latest approved >version (i.e., Ada => "Ada 2005"). Its been well over a year since >AdaCore announced Ada 2005 support started shipping a pretty complete >implementation. As far as I know, no other vendor has yet announced >any intention to support the current standard. Maybe they're working >on it in secrecy. Maybe they are waiting on customer demand. Maybe >they have already lost most of their customers to AdaCore and simply >don't care anymore. > >Whatever the case, I'm concerned that the number of viable Ada vendors >seems to be shrinking. The benefits of language standardization are >greatly diminished if only one vendor bothers to support the standard. > >I have no relationship to AdaCore other than being a supported >customer who is very happy with their support and their business model >(i.e. they sell support, not license keys). Their "build it and they >will come" approach to product development and attracting customers >seems to work well. > >I'm aware that Aonix and DDC-I have had some recent Ada related >product announcements. That's a good thing but still no public >indication that they're working on Ada 2005 support. At least its >still possible to find Ada products featured on the Aonix, DDC-I, and >Green Hills web pages. > >I'm upset/disappointed by what IBM has done to Apex since taking over >Rational several years ago. Apex was (& still is) an excellent, full >featured (though costly) Ada development environment. Since IBM took >over it seems that Apex product development has completely stagnated >while they focus on collecting license maintenance fees from legacy >customers who are in too deep to switch compilers. They also allowed >the same thing to happen with ClearCase - ClearCase users are >switching to Subversion for configuration management. Its not nearly >as capable as ClearCase but its good enough and can be deployed >without buying licenses. If Apex and ClearCase were marketed with an >open-source, support focused business model (instead of a license fee >focused business model) I'm convinced they would have a lot more >success in the market. > >So we need to have more than one Ada vendor to keep Ada viable but I >don't have hope that anyone else can effectively compete with AdaCore >unless they adopt a similar business model. > >-- Sloan > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-28 5:44 ` anon @ 2007-10-28 8:04 ` Pascal Obry 2007-10-28 11:13 ` Jerry van Dijk 1 sibling, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Pascal Obry @ 2007-10-28 8:04 UTC (permalink / raw) To: anon anon a �crit : > Note: The ISO consider Ada 2007 specification (Adopted Jan 2007) to > be an "Ada 95 Amendments 1" only. But It is still "Ada 95" as > the parent specification. > > There are many reason that you can say "One Ada vendor" and that is > GNAT. Any one can take a few movements come up with a lot of reasons > and most of those will be true in one respect or another. > > But to start with is that GNAT is to most not a true Ada compiler. It is > an "Experimental" and "Educational" Ada compiler only. Adacore has not > tried to make it a standard compiler. Wrong!... Again :( Please explain to us why AdaCore has validated an Ada compiler at some point. This was GNAT Pro 4.x IIRC. GNAT is not an "Experimental" or Educational compiler only. Have you looked at AdaCore customer list and the projects using GNAT ???? Pascal. -- --|------------------------------------------------------ --| Pascal Obry Team-Ada Member --| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE --|------------------------------------------------------ --| http://www.obry.net --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination" --| --| gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key C1082595 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-28 5:44 ` anon 2007-10-28 8:04 ` Pascal Obry @ 2007-10-28 11:13 ` Jerry van Dijk 2007-10-29 11:36 ` Georg Bauhaus 1 sibling, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Jerry van Dijk @ 2007-10-28 11:13 UTC (permalink / raw) Colossus.Pike@worldnet.att.net (anon) writes: > But to start with is that GNAT is to most not a true Ada compiler. It is > an "Experimental" and "Educational" Ada compiler only. Adacore has not > tried to make it a standard compiler. Geez. It is not often that I feel compelled to post here nowadays. But this sort of 'Character Deflamation' is really uncalled for. We are lucky, considering todays marketplace, that there are several excellent Ada Toolchains competing for our business. If and how companies invest in upgrading their systems to the latest standards it up to them. The market will decide who is right. But to work that market needs accurate and complete information, not the FUD spreading above. gr. Jerry. -- -- Jerry van Dijk -- Leiden, Holland -- -- The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Only one Ada vendor? 2007-10-28 11:13 ` Jerry van Dijk @ 2007-10-29 11:36 ` Georg Bauhaus 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Georg Bauhaus @ 2007-10-29 11:36 UTC (permalink / raw) On Sun, 2007-10-28 at 12:13 +0100, Jerry van Dijk wrote: > Colossus.Pike@worldnet.att.net (anon) writes: > > > But to start with is that GNAT is to most not a true Ada compiler. It is > > an "Experimental" and "Educational" Ada compiler only. Adacore has not > > tried to make it a standard compiler. > But to work that market needs accurate and complete > information, not the FUD spreading above. Maybe there is a point in saying that some of the latest offerings of AdaCore had included "experimental" support for the *new* features of the Ada 2005 language, in addition to the fully supported Ada 95--much like compilers for Eiffel or C++ include limited or changing support for new features of the latest editions of the respective languages. If some decision maker, by some necessity, has only limited knowledge of what it means to have a compiler for some programming language, it makes a difference to say "We fully support X, period! We support the new Y as well, to the extent that customers...". It is important to know the decision criteria, and to provide suitable and still adequate descriptions to the decision makers. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2007-10-29 11:36 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 18+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2007-10-19 15:05 Only one Ada vendor? Sloan.Kohler 2007-10-20 0:49 ` Randy Brukardt 2007-10-20 2:08 ` Nasser Abbasi 2007-10-20 7:39 ` Simon Wright 2007-10-21 20:57 ` Florian Weimer 2007-10-21 17:23 ` Martin Krischik 2007-10-21 17:33 ` Gary Scott 2007-10-21 19:42 ` Maciej Sobczak 2007-10-21 23:57 ` Robert A Duff 2007-10-22 12:36 ` Georg Bauhaus 2007-10-22 20:55 ` Maciej Sobczak 2007-10-25 9:33 ` llothar 2007-10-25 9:58 ` Ludovic Brenta 2007-10-25 20:35 ` adaworks 2007-10-28 5:44 ` anon 2007-10-28 8:04 ` Pascal Obry 2007-10-28 11:13 ` Jerry van Dijk 2007-10-29 11:36 ` Georg Bauhaus
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox