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From: kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner)
Subject: Re: gnat-3.10
Date: 1997/07/01
Message-ID: <5pbdeo$8qr$1@news.nyu.edu>#1/1
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References: <5oqp9s$7vj$1@news.nyu.edu> <33B13BF6.79C7@no.such.com>
 <5os9i9$o32$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
Organization: New York University Ultracomputer Research Lab
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-07-01T00:00:00+00:00
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In article <5os9i9$o32$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> Dale Stanbrough <dale@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> writes:
>...and there I think is a major issue that needs explaining (to me at
>least!).
>What does "contains" mean? If I write a GUI front end for Gnat, does that
>constitute containment? I could distributed it separately, and have it just
>make system calls to Gnat? What about a program that is linked to some of the
>GNAT parser routines? What about a system that dynamically loads Gnat in as
>a DLL? Is the calling convention what determines the "contains" relationship?

This is indeed a somewhat vague area and, to some extent, purposely so.
The line is more likely to be drawn in terms of the extent to which the
parts work together and are both necessary to accomplish a goal than
in terms of the technical mechanisms used to make the calls between
the pieces.

For example, if somebody made a GUI for GNAT that relied only on its
external specifications and didn't take advantage of anything
particular about GNAT's internal structure, it probably would not be
considered a derived work unless it actually linked in GNAT code.

If you're thinking of doing something "on the fringe" here, you do indeed
have to ask the copyright holder about it.