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-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!t10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Ludovic Brenta Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: MinGW Ada compiler licence question targeting commercial applications Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:24:16 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <0a010647-d078-483f-ba38-685355827a61@t10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com> References: <33f1587d-b3eb-4866-8121-b027743d1114@n4g2000vba.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 94.108.188.177 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1245504257 1284 127.0.0.1 (20 Jun 2009 13:24:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:24:17 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: t10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com; posting-host=94.108.188.177; 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:6550 Date: 2009-06-20T06:24:16-07:00 List-Id: John B. Matthews wrote on comp.lang.ada: > I was puzzled by this, too: > > You're not the only one; I've tried to explain things in the README file of most Debian packages. Here is the text I wrote for libgtkada2- dev at the time of the license change in 2005: Licensing changes ----------------- In the previous version of Debian, libgtkada2 2.4.0 was licensed under the terms of the GNAT-Modified GNU General Public License (GMGPL). This new version is licensed under the terms of the pure GPL. As a consequence, it is no longer legal to distribute proprietary software that incorporates this library. If your program uses GtkAda, and if you wish your program to use licensing terms incompatible with the GPL, you have three choices: - distribute your program in source form only, and require your licensees to build it for themselves. Your sources need not be under GPL, since they are not linked to GtkAda. - contact AdaCore, the upstream author, at sales@adacore.com, and purchase a GMGPL license for GtkAda. - do not distribute your program at all. You may be tempted to retrieve the sources from AdaCore's CVS repository. Be warned that doing so will still grant you a pure GPL license, despite the fact that AdaCore have not yet adjusted the licensing boilerplate in source files. In Debian, I have removed the "special exception" language only to remove confusion. It is not I who changed the actual license, it is AdaCore. Contact them at libre@adacore.com for any clarification. -- Ludovic Brenta.