I am willing to acknowledged that I was the culprit who posted the summary of the report to this forum. It is not necessary to refer to the "somebody" or "someone" who said this or that. I take full responsibility for my remarks. That being said, I continue to believe the Ada policy should, rather than being abandoned, be reinforced with better management. The DoD does not need to change its policy it needs to manage that policy more effectively. With regard to COTS and commercial software practices, the members of the NRC committee may be overly optimistic about the virtue of such products and practices. Although the DoD has not been a leader in the number and variety of software products in the marketplace, and has rarely contributed to the launching of a new software product, it has been the leader in software quality. And this leadership vis a vis quality, has been largely due to the influence of people such as Barry Boehm and others on the NRC committee. Dr. Wasserman has pioneered many important ideas we accept as part of good software practice. And Tucker completed the design of a superb version of Ada. I regularly quote Dr.Liskov in my object-oriented programming classes. Notwithstanding the emminence of the panelists, they have reached a wrong conclusion if they are suggesting the that the DoD depart from its "Ada is the default unless proven otherwise" policy. The outstanding work of Tucker Taft on Ada 95 has elevated Ada to a new level of excellence. This excellence is just being discovered by DoD personnel and contractors. Perhaps, two or threee years from now, we could safely eliminate the policy, but this is exactly the wrong time to do so. The recommendations of the committee are based on experience with Ada 83. I believe they have failed, in spite of their intimate knowledge of both the new Ada standard and the software industry, to reach a correct conclusion. Perhaps they are overly confident in their regard for commercial software practice. Perhaps they are excessively idealistic in their view of commerical software practice. I recognize that everyone on the committee is a lot smarter than I am, and that may be why I am having so much difficulty understanding how they could reach the conclusions they have. Rather than abandon the single-language policy using Ada, we should learn to manage the policy effectively. Once Ada is gone from the DoD, I wonder what scapegoat will emerge to explain poor software policy management. I can foresee a lot of people from the COTS and commercial sector pointing their fingers at each other as commercial software integration fails to satisfy quality in mission critical applications. I hope such failure, in the absence of Ada, will not maninfest itself as an increase in the stock prices of body-bag manufacturers. Richard Riehle [log in to unmask] AdaWorks Software Engineering Suite 30 2555 Park Boulevard Palo Alto, CA 94306 (415) 328-1815 FAX 328-1112