[Info-vax] Ada on VMS, was: Re: Free Pascal for VMS ?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-05-12 20:53:02 +0000, seasoned_geek said:

> On Saturday, May 12, 2018 at 12:05:35 PM UTC-5, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> 
>> some alternative approach on OpenVMS, and see if you can find a market 
>> of folks that are fond of Ada or Pascal and that want OpenVMS.
> 
> There is a large pile of ADA on VMS still in production and there is no 
> way off. While I don't do ADA, I know that most systems developed in 
> ADA __had__ to be developed in ADA. There was something unique ADA 
> brought which didn't exist elsewhere which is why a GNU type approach 
> of translating all languages to GNU internal language and compiling 
> that won't work. Last I heard the GNU Fortran compiler fails miserably 
> with in memory array layouts but I will let Bill correct me on both 
> Fortran and ADA.
> 
> Of course, much of the ADA stuff was in the defense world and no, I 
> don't want to think about why DOW had a system written in ADA which 
> Dupont ended up with after the divorce. That lets my writer's mind run 
> amuck with Castle Wolfenstein scenarios. Where I'm headed with this is 
> the same place Microsoft found itself after paying Compaq to kill off 
> VMS. Breach of National Security contracts.

There is no question that a lot of people have a lot of old code.   As 
for the folks with a whole lot of Ada or some other less-than-supported 
language and with no good upgrade path when staying with OpenVMS, they 
can fund the compiler and the port, or they can continue to have a 
large pile of legacy code that they're going to continue to patch 
together.

Given there's not a whole lot of call for new development with Ada and 
the long-term trend for Ada is negative, most new folks aren't looking 
for Ada support.

The lack of a compiler is a surmountable problem.  It's a SMOP.   
Funding the development work and ongoing support is the interesting 
part.  Low-volume bespoke code is expensive to develop, and one-shot 
licensing doesn't work very well for sustaining compiler development 
and upgrades.   Anybody here fancy volunteering a couple of years' 
effort to write an Ada compiler for free for these folks?   Nah?  Okay. 
 Didn't think so.   And for those that might be interested in offering 
this or another compiler commercially, they'll all be pondering whether 
the various potential customers are likely to pay enough to sustain the 
work and offset the development costs and preferably with a profit, or 
are the potential customers more likely to do little or nothing, or to 
port to some to other platform that has an existing Ada compiler?

Sometimes the folks involved in these cases will band together and 
create some options for themselves.  Sometimes not.  Think prisoner's 
dilemma, too.

For the vendors and the customers, the whole software market and 
software pricing is far different than it was in the previous 
millennium.


-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC