Re: Ada in Debian: most libraries will switch to the pure GPL in Etch

[Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 22:23 +0200, Michael Bode wrote:

>  I
> claim that a sudden, secret and maybe retroactive (or maybe it was
> between 2.4.0 and 2.4.1?, AdaCore won't tell us) change of license
> happend to GtkAda. And if that happens once ...
> 
> Regarding messages from AdaCore to the contrary of anything:
> 
> http://web.archive.org/web/20050224092046/http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/
> 

Ludovic lets us know a response from AdaCore that uses the _present_
tense,

- All software downloaded from AdaCore is pure GPL, no matter what the
  headers say.

I don't think that _if_ there was a legal status at a time in the
recent past, this status can be declared something different.
These things should happen only after one legal system has been
dropped in favor of another, for example after a war.
I am aware that many of the software packages used to be advertised
as being GMGPL.

With Debian in particular,
I think there might be more issues, like you don't want to stress your
good relations with AdaCore, if any, if you are maintaining Debian Ada 
software that nowadays is mostly produced by AdaCore. This, I guess,
is just a business issue for some who are involved.

In fact, we might be able to produce more GPLed software for profit
in spite of all the rogues around. It's worth a try, anyway, and
some report success.

Yet, what about a collaborative effort to produce good general
purpose Ada libraries to be used in Ada programs,
irrespective of the compiler. Hm. A PAL with funding from everyone
involved, including compiler makers and their customers.
We've all got to make a living, haven't we?


Georg