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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died
Date: 02 Mar 2003 15:03:18 -0500
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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"John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net> writes:

>...That
> company would, out of enlightened self-interest, KEEP QUIET about the fact
> that they were using Ada, treating it as competition-sensitive proprietary
> information.

I don't agree with that kind of strategy.  The problem is that there is
a great value in standards.  If you're the last person on earth using
Ada, and Ada is a huge benifit over whatever language is the popular,
that benefit will be lost, because you're going to be providing all the
funding for Ada compiler delevopment, and all the training in Ada
programming.

Much better to get lots of folks (even your competitors) to use Ada, so
you can share the cost of Ada compilers and so forth.

In the United States, everybody drives on the right-hand side of the
road.  If I come up with some reason why driving on the left is
beneficial, it's no good if I just start driving on the left.  I have to
convince everybody else to do it, too, or it won't work.

- Bob