Re: In praise of Ada Freeware

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote in message news:<9k3ui1$ql1$1@nh.pace.co.uk>...

> To a large extent, this is provided under the Ada Developers 
> Cooperative License. 

Perhaps, but that's a MUCH more restrictive license than the GPL.
Certainly any company that does not like the GPL is going to like
that even less.

> The ADCL is a lot less restrictive than the GPL in the sense of 
> enabling use by a wide variety of people - it just
> reserves some financial rights in some rather limited cases.

Well it's a matter of point of view, from my point of view restricting
redistribution rights in any manner is a very significant restriction,
and the ADCL qualifies neither as Open Source, nor as Free Software
under the usual definitions (see the relevant web sites for
definitions of these terms).

But ultimately the real point here is that copyright holders can
decide their own licensing conditions, I doubt any discussion, least
of all
among the habituees of CLA, is going to have epsilon effect on the
license that people choose to use for the software they create.