Re: AdaCore ... the Next SCO?

["Hyman Rosen" <hyman.rosen@gmail.com>]

M E Leypold wrote:
> Wonderful. Now tell me what rights ACT had to strip the linking
> exception from most files of florist. Please do that after diffing GPL
> florist against 3.15p.

Florist itself grants that right. For example, I looked at
<http://www.cs.uofs.edu/~beidler/Ada/posix/ada_task_identification.html>.
It says at the beginning,
FLORIST is free software;  you can  redistribute  it and/or  modify it
under terms of the  GNU  General  Public  License as  published by the
Free Software Foundation;  either version  2, or (at  your option) any
later version.

That's what AdaCore is doing - they are choosing to distribute it
solely under the GPL. While the above header does grant the special
linking exemption as well, it does not require that this exemption must
continue to be given upon redistribution. In fact, a close reading of
that heading would imply that you are not even permitted to
redistribute with that exemption! That is, when the file is distributed
to you from the original party, it grants you the exemption, but it
says that you can only redistribute it under the GPL as published by
the FSF.