From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: a07f3367d7,c92999d3d36edb6c X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!j20g2000vbp.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Ludovic Brenta Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: MinGW Ada compiler licence question targeting commercial applications Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:32:09 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <01527aaf-991b-447b-a516-7dbe6b345650@j20g2000vbp.googlegroups.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 94.108.212.191 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1245357129 8791 127.0.0.1 (18 Jun 2009 20:32:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:32:09 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: j20g2000vbp.googlegroups.com; posting-host=94.108.212.191; posting-account=pcLQNgkAAAD9TrXkhkIgiY6-MDtJjIlC User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009030810 Iceweasel/3.0.9 (Debian-3.0.9-1),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:6521 Date: 2009-06-18T13:32:09-07:00 List-Id: anon wrote on comp.lang.ada: > The license is for the GNAT compiler and tool suite. =A0You can freely do= wnload > and modify any to all GNAT programs but you can not sell GNAT or its tool= s > suite unless you obtain the rights from Adacore. =A0You can charge for th= e time > downloading, and the time you spend modifying and compiling GNAT as well > as the cost of the storage media (CD). =A0But 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 a= nd > 3 will force you to use a GPL or GPL-like license for your commerical pro= ject. > 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 =A0 > 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.