"Crispen, Bob" <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> <snip>
>
> And there's more to it than size.  Sometimes the desires of the
> customer community are entirely different from the desires of the
> developer community.  Say what you will about Office integration,
> there isn't a shadow of a doubt in my mind that every single feature
> was the result of customer, not developer, desires and priorities.
> I don't see much way for a traditional, voluntary open source
> development model, such as exists in Linux and FreeBSD, to
> accommodate that.

All of the recent features of GNAT were added because of customer
requests, backed up by customer money. That's how Ada Core
Technologies stays in business.

So there may be no way for voluntary open source development to
accomodate customers, but that's not the only open source model!

--
-- Stephe