Re: MinGW Ada compiler licence question targeting commercial applications

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

anon wrote on comp.lang.ada:
> The license is for the GNAT compiler and tool suite.  You can freely download
> and modify any to all GNAT programs but you can not sell GNAT or its tools
> suite unless you obtain the rights from Adacore.  You can charge for the time
> downloading, and the time you spend modifying and compiling GNAT as well
> as the cost of the storage media (CD).  But that's it!

No, that's entirely wrong. GNAT is licensed under the GPL which
explicitly allows one to charge for copies of the software. I could
legally sell you a single copy of GNAT for One... Million... Dollars
if you were willing to pay.  The first catch is that *if* I sell (or
give away) a copy of GNAT, then I must also sell (or give away) the
sources along with it, at no *extra* cost.  If the copy I sell or give
is modified, then the sources that I must sell or give along are the
modified sources.  The second catch is that *you* are legally allowed
to re-sell (or give away) copies of the software to anyone, under the
same conditions.

> Now, if you use GNAT, you can build a commercial program, but the GPL 2 and
> 3 will force you to use a GPL or GPL-like license for your commerical project.
> That is, the source code must be available for those who use your program.

That is not true either. The source code must only be available to
those who receive a copy of the program; not to those who use the
program.  Think "software as a service": a customer can use a program
over the network without receiving a copy of it.  In this case, the
vendor does not distribute the program at all, so is not required to
disclose the sources.

The GNU Affero General Public License[1] is an alternative to the GPL
that does require vendors of such services to provide the sources.
Neither GNAT nor its run-time library use this license.

[1] http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html
  
> You can sell the binaries for $xx.xx, and you may either give the source if
> they ask or in some cases you can charge addition $yy.yy for the source.

The "addition" must be no more than the cost of physically copying the
sources, i.e. zero in the age of the Internet, or perhaps one euro for
a CD-ROM.

--
Ludovic Brenta.