Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

From: Alexander E. Kopilovich (aek_at_VB1162.spb.edu)
Date: 04/27/04

  • Next message: Hyman Rosen: "Re: Unified Ada library" 
    Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:26:01 +0400 (MSD)
To: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org

    Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:

    > >Modern science deals also with budgets, management, conferences, grants,
    > >degrees and citations.
    >
    > that's scientific bureaucracy

    Call it what you wish, but take into account that vast majority of scientists
    do not oppose it anymore, but participate in all that stuff rather actively.
    It is important that all those things influence significantly and sometimes
    even effectively determine directions of scientific research. As a consequence
    some paradigms take over others in scientific views just because some
    scientific directions/fields were more supported recently and thus are better
    developed than others.

    > >By the way, just curious, did you sell *anything* *on open market* (shareware
    > >or commercial product)?
    >
    > The firm I am working in, sells several commercial products.

    There is a huge and principal difference between selling your products on open
    market and working for a firm that do that. When you are an individual seller
    you take decisions and see immediate results. You choose the price for your
    product, and you income depends on whether your guess is right. But when you
    work for a firm (not as a top manager, but as a software developer), you do
    not take such decisions, and your salary does not immediately depend on the
    particular results. Yes, it is possible that you may somehow influence your
    firm's decisions regarding product prices and marketing policies in general,
    but this is very far from taking decision yourself. If you try that once then
    you'll see this acute difference.

    > >lack of either practical or theoretical experience in the matter do not
    > >detract them proposing radical measures for the software market.
    >
    >You need not to have any experience to see what is going on.

    You may need not much experience to see that something is going wrong, but
    you certainly need some experience to propose particular measures - because
    without that experience your propositions probably will make things even worse.

    > Though it
    > is not clear what sort of experience you meant,

    I meant practical experience - just create at least one software product and
    sell it yourself - either as a invidividual or as a top manager of a firm,
    regardless of the firm's size. After that you most probably will not be so
    sure that liability for software products is a good thing.

    I understand, though, that surrounding environment probably influences you.
    Let me tell you briefly a real story. Several years ago I received a
    proposition for a contract and it appeared that for that contract I must sign
    NDA for 25 years (!) with huge fines in a case of violation. It was from
    Germany. I think that any sane American will never propose such an unrealistic
    NDA; but a perfectly sane man from Germany (nationality means little here)
    will and indeed was. Naturally, I refused to sign that NDA. After that the NDA
    was rewritten, it was made for 3 or 5 years and fines were reduced drastically
    (after that they still were much higher that the amount of payment for the
    work). Then I signed that NDA and the contract was succesfully completed.
    This story shows one thing: in Germany the difference between 25-year NDA and
    5-year NDA is not perceived as significant. And in this specific atmosphere
    you may think that user of a software product will sue the vendor for a good
    reason only, that is, when s/he discovers a defect in the product, and
    moreover, a defect that actually harmed or annoyed the user. In short words,
    you suppose that a user will be, as a rule, perfectly honest and reasonably
    literate.

    > because there is no
    > true science dealing with market economy. Well, there are many people,
    > who count themselves as scientists. Unfortunately all their theories
    > lack any prediction power.

    I don't know whether there is true science dealing with market economy or not,
    but certainly there can't be a science that will reliably predict where you
    will find a bag of money waiting for you. There may be an art, which uses some
    scientific theories and methods as some of its tools, but no more. Science
    always is external to its subject, and money is practically omnipresent in a
    market economy. But it does not mean that a science can't predict anything
    significant in market economy; the limitation is simple: science can't predict
    anything that will permit you to device a guaranteed (and legal!) way to
    wealth -;) .

    Recall quantum mechanics - it is a science, and there are things, which it
    can predict, but there are also severe limitations to its prediction power.

    > I meant only the law, which should treat sold software as an insurance
    > contract rather than a "right to use". At least contract parties
    > should have equal rights.

    I don't quite understand that: do you mean that some insurance company must
    be always involved as a mandatory third party between a vendor and a user?
    That is, every software product to be legally sold must be insured by some
    insurance firm? Then who will be really (and legally) insured - vendor or
    user?

    > >I think that liability is actually in effect - not legal liability, but market
    > >liability - not in the form of fines, but in the form of losses of income.
    >
    > This does not work. Software market chooses the worst.

    I don't think so. I don't think that millions of people must have the same
    needs and tastes as I and my friends and colleagues have - regarding computers
    and software. Even majority of software developers may have other needs,
    tastes and priorities.

    Note that market never chooses immediately and/or forever. It is a big and
    substantially stochasic system, and moreover, it is a multi-dimensional
    system. Sometimes we can see some clear and relatively stable preference and
    we call it a choice (done by the market). I can't see what can it mean really
    that "software market chooses the worst".

    > >Do you really want that New Order?
    >
    > I don't. So I don't want DCMA and Microsoft.

    There is a big difference between the Brave New World and the New Order.
    Perhaps you are trying to escape from the road to the first one, but
    effectively you are calling for the second - at least if you are proposing
    direct liability.

    > >> The navigation system, radio, CD
    > >> player etc, all that will be connected to the field bus. They will
    > >> also have Bluetooth and Internet connections. This will open wide
    > >> possibilities for attacks of all sorts.
    > >
    > >All that is quite obvious, and car vendors personnel (including their
    > >software engineers) are neither preschool kids nor full idiots. After all,
    > >probably they all have cars.
    >
    > There is a overwhelming force of market overriding everything you have
    > mentioned.

    How do you know the direction of this force, and whether that direction will
    be stable in near future? You just said that there is no science that can
    predict market economy.

    How do you think, if some car vendors will produce fully computerized cars
    that will be obviously unreliable, and at the same time some other car
    vendors decided to wait and continue production of not-so-computerized cars,
    what will the market choose?

    > After all we have examples at hand - how reliable is PC software?

    Well, I think that for all reasonable definitions of reliability it is quite
    reliable these times = for its diversity, purposes and prices.

    For example, I think that in last year Windows 2000 on my PC crashed less
    times than electricity in my flat (actually in the whole 14-storey building)
    failed. At least I'm sure that these numbers are near each other. So, the
    perception of reliability may depend on your country of residence.

    > >But nevertheless, I think that a free and open-source emulator of generic car
    > >would be a good thing.
    >
    > What are you going to simulate?

    Spaces. Physical spaces - geometry, electricity etc. etc.; informational
    spaces; driver spaces and passenger spaces; external spaces - local external
    circumstances space, local traffic space etc.

    Then came real-world objects, which are collections of their representatives
    in various spaces and sets of logical/computational connections between those
    their representatives.

    > And, well, who will serve 25 years in jail for cracking
    > proprietary protocols?

    There is absolutely no need to crack anything. First, there probably will not
    be anything interesting enough to crack. Second, all those protocols can be
    easily imagined - well, they certainly will not be the same as in real cars,
    but so what? Those parties who will think that the difference is significant
    for them will point on it and provide an information, which will be sufficient
    for adjustment or generalization. We simply should not care about the distant
    sources of that information, it will be sufficient that information is
    provided publicly, and it need not be exact information - it may be just a
    hint.

    Although certainly it would be better if the sources of actual car software
    were published, as I said some time ago.

    > >And that Ada 2005 would be very appropriate programming
    > >language for this purpose.
    >
    > Ada 95 + SPARK (for some components) would be ideal.

    Yes, I think that SPARK may be quite useful for some components.

    > But I doubt it will be even considered.

    Why not? We (or someone else) can consider it. Perhaps you mean car vendors
    here, but why should we bother ourselves with *their* problems?

    Alexander Kopilovich aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
    Saint-Petersburg
    Russia

  • Next message: Hyman Rosen: "Re: Unified Ada library"

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