Re: AdaBrowse 1.5 available

[dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)]

Thomas Wolf <t_wolf@angelfire.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.171775b567a3c15a989688@news.ip-plus.net>...
> dennison@telepath.com wrote:
> 
> > What are the chances we could check your sources into the gcc-gnat CVS
> > tree, and get rid of that stupid Perl script altogether?
> 
> I have no basic objections to this, but:
> 
> - Is ASIS-for-GNAT in the gcc-gnat CVS tree? Without an
>   ASIS-for-GNAT for the gcc-gnat, it wouldn't make much
>   sense to put AdaBrowse there.

I don't know enough about ASIS to know what to look for, but if you do
you can check for yourself at
http://sources.redhat.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/gcc/gcc/ada/?cvsroot=gcc
.

> 
> - I didn't care about GNU coding guidelines or whatever when I 
>   developed AdaBrowse, so if it is to be put into the gcc-gnat
>   CVS tree (and supposedly, into the gcc distribution), there
>   may be some work to do in that respect.

For the most part, they are irrelevant to Ada. When I looked into it
for one of my projects, the only one that seemed like it would be an
issue was the requirement to keep all documentation in texinfo format.
It might be a good idea to recompile things with the ACT style checks
on, but if you don't I'm sure someone else will later. :-)

> - AdaBrowse uses (and its source distribution contains) a couple
>   of units that are *not* GPLed, but distributed under the more
>   permissive Ada Community License (the one used by the Ada 95
>   Booch components). I have no idea if this would be OK with GNU
>   policies. An option might perhaps be to use something akin to
>   the modified GPL as used by the GNAT library for these units.

Ouch. I thought it was all GPL. That could be a serious problem.

If it qualifies as a Free Software license, and is compatable with the
GPL, then there should be no problem. If it isn't compatable with the
GPL, *that* could be a fatal problem, not only with the GNU folks, but
for everyone else as well. That   prevents *anyone* from distributing
your sources (not including you, of course, assuming you have the
copyright on everything).

The GPL is generally incompatable with any license that tries to place
extra restrictions on what people can do when they redistribute. I see
some worrysome stuff in there, but then its a bit obtuse and IANAL. It
claims to be derived from Perl's Artistic License. The original
version of that was considered non-free and GPL incompatable
(supposely for its extreme obtuseness). The current version (as well
as a "clarified version") is Free and GPL compatable. But who knows
which version the Ada folks used and what changes they introduced may
have done to things?

I'd say personally (as someone who currently is running 4 "Open
Source" software projects), I wouldn't use that license. Its
"freenesss" wrt the GPL is debatable (it places restrictions on what
you can do with it when you don't even redistribute the result, which
the GPL never does). It is certianly more restrictive than the GMGPL.
It seems to be shooting for the same goals as the GMGPL, but its
compatability with GPL'ed systems is questionable while the GMGPL's is
not.

If I were you I'd at least satisfy myself that it is GPL-compatable
before combining it with GPL code and publicly distributing it.


-- 
T.E.D.
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