* Re: gnat-3.10 @ 1997-07-02 0:00 Peter Hermann 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Peter Hermann @ 1997-07-02 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) it is quite frustrating to frequently read this subject line and at the same time seeing ez2load freezed at 3.07 since January 1997 :-( Robert and the Bobs, please don't reply: we outdoor folks know the answer. -- Peter Hermann Tel:+49-711-685-3611 Fax:3758 ph@csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569 Stuttgart Uni Computeranwendungen Team Ada: "C'mon people let the world begin" (Paul McCartney) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-07-02 0:00 gnat-3.10 Peter Hermann @ 1997-07-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-02 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Peter Herman said <<it is quite frustrating to frequently read this subject line and at the same time seeing ez2load freezed at 3.07 since January 1997 :-( >> There was no DOS 3.09, because we ran into a nasty signal problem that we could not solve under DJGPP. We are hoping that there will be a DOS 3.10, and have some ideas about how to solve these problems,but the DOS port at this stage has very low priority, since, not suprisingly there is very little commercial interest in this port. Still, we will do our best to make a 3.10 DOS version available. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies Peter: machines that run Windows 95 can be bought for a song these days, how about upgrading that old DOS system :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* gnat-3.10 @ 1997-05-28 0:00 Ronald Cole 1997-05-29 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-05-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert, Are we going to see a 3.10 release which can bootstrap itself on HPUX (3.09 can't) anytime soon? -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-05-28 0:00 gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-05-29 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-05-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-05-29 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole <<Robert, Are we going to see a 3.10 release which can bootstrap itself on HPUX (3.09 can't) anytime soon?>> If you see a public release of GNAT from us, then you know it has been bootstrapped, i.e. we succeeded in bootstrapping the HPUX 3.09 version. It's not too surprising that Ronald might not be able to do so without help from us, there can be tricky points involved in any of these GNAT bootstraps, which is why most people work with the binary releases. As for 3.10, we never give any prognosis on schedules for public releases. A number of our customers are working with prereleases of 3.10 very successfully, and all we will say is that, as for all GNAT releases, it will be releases publicly some time in the future. Of course we cannot guarantee that when it is realeased, Ronald Cole will be able to bootstrap it on HPUX! (but we will have bootstrapped it!) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-05-29 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-05-30 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-07 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-05-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > If you see a public release of GNAT from us, then you know it has been > bootstrapped, i.e. we succeeded in bootstrapping the HPUX 3.09 version. > It's not too surprising that Ronald might not be able to do so without > help from us, there can be tricky points involved in any of these GNAT > bootstraps, which is why most people work with the binary releases. Obviously you personally haven't tried to build gnat-3.09-src.tar.gz with gnat-3.09-hppa1.1-hp-hpux10.10-bin.tar.gz while following the directions exactly as given in src/README.UNIX. Please! Try it for yourself and be sure to post your results. Even with the following patch provided by your team, the gnat1 component bootstrapped itself, but it couldn't finish building the Run Time Library: --- function.c~ Tue Feb 11 13:33:53 1997 +++ function.c Tue Feb 18 12:32:05 1997 @@ -2963,5 +2963,5 @@ 0)) || (GET_CODE (XEXP (x, 0)) == REG - && instantiate_virtual_regs_1 (&XEXP (x, 0), 0, 0))) + && instantiate_virtual_regs_1 (&XEXP (x, 0), object, 0))) return 1; > As for 3.10, we never give any prognosis on schedules for public releases. > A number of our customers are working with prereleases of 3.10 very > successfully, and all we will say is that, as for all GNAT releases, it > will be releases publicly some time in the future. > > Of course we cannot guarantee that when it is realeased, Ronald Cole > will be able to bootstrap it on HPUX! > (but we will have bootstrapped it!) I hope you'll understand that I'll still question the validity of a binary release that can't even compile itself without asserting a fatal compiler error. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-05-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-07 0:00 ` Robert Dewar [not found] ` <m2vi3kpuay.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net> 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-07 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole says <<I hope you'll understand that I'll still question the validity of a binary release that can't even compile itself without asserting a fatal compiler error. >> It is perfectly possible to bootstrap this version of GNAT, if you have the right versions of everything. So the issue here is not whether this version can compile itself, of course it can, it is whether Ronald Cole without help from us can do it? Apparently the answer is no. We provide our binary releases on an as-is basis, and they have always been bootstrapped. We do NOT particularly spend a lot of effort ensuring that they can easily be built without our help from sources, though many people do in fact succeed in this effort. Certainly if you are specifically concerned with the "validity" of a binary release, we would advise you to get it from us. We take no responsibility for public versions that are around on the net. We try to make sure that they are in good shape, and correspond to what we distributed originally, but we cannot guarantee this, and we certainly do NOT guarantee that everyone will be able to build them from sources. Ada Core Technologies Robert B. K. Dewar ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <m2vi3kpuay.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net>]
* Re: gnat-3.10 [not found] ` <m2vi3kpuay.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net> @ 1997-06-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Stephen Leake 1997-06-14 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Jerry van Dijk 2 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole said <<Bootstrapped according to the directions you so thoughtfully provide in your source distribution? Doubtful, see below. >> Well some people manage with these directions alone, by fiddling around, other people succeed with advice that we give. We do not provide any help in building from sources for unsupported users of GNAT. Nevertheless, many such people succeed in building from sources. And, as I have said before, any binary version you see from us has been built from sources and bootstrapped. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-12 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-13 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Joerg Rodemann 0 siblings, 2 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > Ronald Cole said > <<Bootstrapped according to the directions you so thoughtfully provide > in your source distribution? Doubtful, see below. > >> > > Well some people manage with these directions alone, by fiddling around, > other people succeed with advice that we give. We do not provide any help > in building from sources for unsupported users of GNAT. Nevertheless, many > such people succeed in building from sources. And, as I have said before, > any binary version you see from us has been built from sources and > bootstrapped. Why do your excuses keep changing, Bob? And why didn't you answer my question at the end of my post? I think we all know why... I've clearly demonstrated that the gnat1 binary in the hpux distribution is broken... for both your supported *and* unsupported users. Plain and simple. Of course, you're too proud to fix it or to document the actual "fiddling around" required to bootstrap on this platform in the src/README.UNIX file because that would be tantamount to admitting that you might actually have been wrong. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-13 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-06-13 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Joerg Rodemann 1 sibling, 2 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-13 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole said <<Why do your excuses keep changing, Bob? And why didn't you answer my question at the end of my post? I think we all know why... I've clearly demonstrated that the gnat1 binary in the hpux distribution is broken... for both your supported *and* unsupported users. Plain and simple. Of course, you're too proud to fix it or to document the actual "fiddling around" required to bootstrap on this platform in the src/README.UNIX file because that would be tantamount to admitting that you might actually have been wrong.>> First, I am Robert, not Bob :-) Second, we do our best to give accurate directions for building from sources. Generally we are quite successful, since many knowledgable people can indeed build successfully, even if they are not our customers. Of course if they are our customers, then we provide whatever help they need. Your difficulties might be incompetence, or something you have overlooked, or a glitch in the instructions, or a wrong patch somewhere, or a wrong version of something, but the point is that we are not the slightest bit interested in spending time to investigate which on a volunteer basis. I do not know quite what you want me to admit as wrong. All I have every claimed is that a lot of people have managed to build from sources, and that we do not care to spend any time helping people build from sources unless they are our customers, and finally, that all binary versions of GNAT have been bootstrapped by us (it is actually impossible for us to prepare a binary version without bootstrapping, since the process of preparing a binary version is part of the run that does a bootstrap). The fact that you cannot build from sources would be a concern to us if you were a customer, but since you are not, it is not. As i said before, we do our best to make the instructions for building from sources complete and accurate, but we make absolutely NO guarantees that these instructions are complete or accurate. You seen to continue to expect me or us to spend time looking through your build attempts. Sorry, won't happen if you are not a customer! We are a commercial company, not a help-Ronald-with-his-problems-at-no-cost organization! Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-13 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-13 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1 sibling, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-13 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole said <<<<Why do your excuses keep changing, Bob? And why didn't you answer my question at the end of my post? I think we all know why...>> Just to be clear, I do indeed hope that we all know why, the reason is that I did not even read through your post, and I do not intend to (and I can't understand why you expect me to!) Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-13 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-16 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Pontius 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 CHARLET Arnaud 0 siblings, 2 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > Just to be clear, I do indeed hope that we all know why, the reason is that > I did not even read through your post, and I do not intend to (and I can't > understand why you expect me to!) Robert, you posted your fallacious premises and I proved them wrong in considerable detail. You alone chose to wallow in your own abject ignorance because you're too prejudiced to accept bug reports from people you bully in this forum, too proud to admit that you made a sub-standard binary release, and too unconcerned about repeating that mistake. If all you have to offer in rebuttal is more ad-hominem attacks, please don't bother: it's not very professional of you. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-16 0:00 ` Dale Pontius 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole ` (2 more replies) 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 CHARLET Arnaud 1 sibling, 3 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Dale Pontius @ 1997-06-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <m2d8pms722.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net>, Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> writes: > > too prejudiced to accept bug reports from people you bully in this You seem to mistake postings here for official bug reports. Read ANY documentation on GNAT, and you'll find out that it is provided as-is. If support is required, and if GNAT is a critical part of your business, then you should become a paying GNAT user. Then you will get support. More importantly, ACT and Cygnus, among others are an absolutely critical experiment in the software industry. They will answer the question, "Is there any middleground between students/hobbyists hacking away at GNU code and commercial software houses like Micro- soft?" Only a little bit of GNU code has made it to the mainstream, and it's still pretty well untrusted in the business world, and it's all because of "support." Even though informal Usenet support from the author/maintainer is usually better than any company, business demands a business. ACT/Cygnus/etc are an important bridge that retains free software, yet makes it acceptable to business. You call ACT money-grubbing because they're not giving you free support. I call them downright generous because I have access to their software for free, even if it is unsupported. Dale Pontius (NOT speaking for IBM) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Pontius @ 1997-06-17 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Andrew Lynch 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Pontius 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-19 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Arthur Schwarz 2 siblings, 2 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) pontius@btv.vnet.ibm.com (Dale Pontius) writes: > You seem to mistake postings here for official bug reports. Read > ANY documentation on GNAT, and you'll find out that it is provided > as-is. If support is required, and if GNAT is a critical part of > your business, then you should become a paying GNAT user. Then you > will get support. Please learn to follow a thread. I posted early on that I reported this bug several months ago and got back a patch from Richard Kenner but that it didn't seem to do the trick. > You call ACT money-grubbing because they're not giving you free > support. I call them downright generous because I have access to > their software for free, even if it is unsupported. I call them money-grubbing because Robert is constantly bringing it up. "I'll tell you it's broken it if you pay me" probably isn't such a hot marketing strategy... Nowhere did I say I needed it fixed now; but, it will need to be fixed if ACT is ever to have customers on the pa-risc platform. In fact, it may already be fixed; but I'm guessing it isn't. My original post only attempted to asked if ACT will have time to address it for the 3.10 release, because they clearly didn't for the 3.09 release. Robert then replied that there was nothing wrong with the 3.09 release and proceeded to spew venom at me; forcing me to demonstrate that, yes indeed, there is something wrong with the 3.09 release. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-18 0:00 ` Andrew Lynch 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Pontius 1 sibling, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Andrew Lynch @ 1997-06-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole wrote: > pontius@btv.vnet.ibm.com (Dale Pontius) writes: [...] > > You call ACT money-grubbing because they're not giving you free > > support. I call them downright generous because I have access to > > their software for free, even if it is unsupported. > > I call them money-grubbing because Robert is constantly bringing it > up. "I'll tell you it's broken it if you pay me" probably isn't such > a hot marketing strategy... Indeed it is not. A much better marketing strategy would be: 1) "I'll give you the product if you pay me" 2) "I'll tell you it's broken if you pay me some more" 3) "I'll fix what is broken if you pay me even more" 4) "I'll actually let you have the fixed version if you pay me..." Many software and hardware companies run successfully like this. I've been told that some places (maybe MS or Compaq?) even ask you to pay for _sending_ them bug reports, let alone somebody actually dealing with the bug. I see being able to get a free version of GNAT as a privilege, not a right. If GNAT does not work for me, then tough shit. I can either have a look at the sources and try to fix it myself, or I can *pay* ACT to make me a version that works for me, or I can wait for the changes that somebody else *paid* ACT to make become available in a public release. For my personal use of GNAT I usually go with the third option. If you want to use GNAT in your company I would suggest you go with option two and carry on these arguments via email. Andrew. (Beware of sarcasm) Maybe ACT could fix every problem free of charge, but for how long? At some point all ACT employees will have starved to death and then where will you send your bug reports..? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Andrew Lynch @ 1997-06-18 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 0 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Andrew Lynch <lynch@cci.de> writes: > I see being able to get a free version of GNAT as a privilege, not a > right. If GNAT does not work for me, then tough shit. I am under the impression GNAT is under the GPL because it was developed with government money and uses the gcc backend. The "tough shit" part really isn't true because source is made available. > I can either have a look at the sources and try to fix it myself, or > I can *pay* ACT to make me a version that works for me, or I can > wait for the changes that somebody else *paid* ACT to make become > available in a public release. The latter is what I'm doing since Robert has convinced me that I probably should charge him for any fixes I make to his product. And since it'll be a cold day in hell when that happens, I won't be able to distribute fixed versions. It looks like quite a bit of work to make the pa-risc more robust with Ada. It also seems like no one is willing to pay the high cost to fix it. Of course, I'm not screwing around with any of the gcc-2.8 pre-releases so I may be completely off-base here, but no one has provided any information to indicate that it will change in this area. I would be very willing to pay for support once I saw that the product had matured on that platform. Robert has yet to convince me with a factual argument that GNAT for the pa-risc has. > For my personal use of GNAT I usually go with the third option. If > you want to use GNAT in your company I would suggest you go with > option two and carry on these arguments via email. No client of mine would be willing to pay what it would cost to make GNAT more robust on the pa-risc platform. > Maybe ACT could fix every problem free of charge, but for how long? > At some point all ACT employees will have starved to death and then > where will you send your bug reports..? The Hacker Ethic that spawned the GNU Manifesto has both feet in the coffin. I contributed a considerable amount and time and effort to develop COFF support for and get it into g++-1.32 almost a decade ago. It was the right thing to do and I don't regret not profiting from it at all. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Andrew Lynch @ 1997-06-18 0:00 ` Dale Pontius 1 sibling, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Dale Pontius @ 1997-06-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <m2yb88sqc2.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net>, Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> writes: > > Please learn to follow a thread. I posted early on that I reported > this bug several months ago and got back a patch from Richard Kenner > but that it didn't seem to do the trick. > Well sorry about that, but our newsserver has already purged the beginning of this whole thing. But that doesn't change the facts of the whole support issue. Is Richard Kenner from ACT? If so, and you did get a patch from him, then you got a freebie. As someone else said, some folks charge to even make a bug report. Dale Pontius (NOT speaking for IBM) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Pontius 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner 1997-06-19 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Arthur Schwarz 2 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Dale says <<More importantly, ACT and Cygnus, among others are an absolutely critical experiment in the software industry. They will answer the question, "Is there any middleground between students/hobbyists hacking away at GNU code and commercial software houses like Micro- soft?" Only a little bit of GNU code has made it to the mainstream, and it's still pretty well untrusted in the business world, and it's all because of "support." Even though informal Usenet support from the author/maintainer is usually better than any company, business demands a business>> The reason that business demands a business is that they need to be sure they have support when they need it, and that they get to decide when the need for support arises. It is interesting that more and more of our support is not related to bugs in GNAT, but rather, as people build more complex applications using GNAT, and using the more complex features of Ada 95, with giving people assistance in the use of GNAT. Also a lot of our business relates to special purpose needs. Yes, sometimes informal Usenet support can be quite effective, but on the other hand, it can sometimes be highly unreliable. In particular, people giving free support can quite reasonably take the attitude that you should spend a lot of your time creating an absolutely clear example, which can be a very time consuing excercise. We quite often deal with large programs which don't seem to work at some particular point, and we dig around. Sometimes the digging shows up a GNAT bug, sometimes a bug in the customer code, sometimes just a misunderstanding. This digging can of course be very time consuming. Also, I think the informal model works best when you have a program that is of a level that one person can maintain it as a spare time hobby. Free software has faired quite well, even without formal support in this kind of situation. However, this model does not work well for large complex pieces of software, like GCC, or GNAT, where you need a team of people working full time. In such cases, the Cygnus or ACT model seems more workable (a similar situation is true with Linux/GNU where more than one company has sprung up to support this system. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-18 0:00 ` Richard Kenner 0 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Richard Kenner @ 1997-06-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.866559209@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: >Yes, sometimes informal Usenet support can be quite effective, but on the >other hand, it can sometimes be highly unreliable. In particular, people >giving free support can quite reasonably take the attitude that you should >spend a lot of your time creating an absolutely clear example, which can be >a very time consuing excercise. Moreover, the emphasis in such support is to improve the product, not solve the user's problem. So if a report of a bug is made and the bug has already been fixed in the development sources, the person is either told that or does not receive a response since their bug report is no longer "useful". But if they were a customer of a commercial maintainer of the software, they would have to receive a patch unless it was possible to make that new version available to them. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Pontius 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-19 0:00 ` Arthur Schwarz 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Arthur Schwarz @ 1997-06-19 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) I love this stuff. Makes me long for Kindergarten. I'm going to tell my wife that this is more interesting than 'Soaps', evening or daytime. A serial in the making. Real life in the raw. Wasted bandwidth. Go get'em (generic) guys. arthur schwarz aschwarz@acm.org schwarza@gdls.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Pontius @ 1997-06-16 0:00 ` CHARLET Arnaud 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1 sibling, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: CHARLET Arnaud @ 1997-06-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole (ronald@ridgenet.net) wrote: : Robert, you posted your fallacious premises and I proved them wrong in : considerable detail. You only proved you weren't able to compile gnat, that's all. How long will you post your uninteresting and angry messages on this newsgroup ? Apparently, you don't know what is compilation/gcc/gnat/ Makefiles, maybe you should buy some books on it and read them. : You alone chose to wallow in your own abject ignorance because you're : too prejudiced to accept bug reports from people you bully in this : forum, too proud to admit that you made a sub-standard binary : release, and too unconcerned about repeating that mistake. Please stop being angry and stop posting your long and uninteresting messages, lots of people pay for reading news. : If all you have to offer in rebuttal is more ad-hominem attacks, please : don't bother: it's not very professional of you. Ok kid, I don't want to know if/where you work, but I'm glad I'm not your boss. Arno ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 CHARLET Arnaud @ 1997-06-17 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Samuel Tardieu 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) charlet@archimede.enst-bretagne.fr (CHARLET Arnaud) writes: > You only proved you weren't able to compile gnat, that's all. > How long will you post your uninteresting and angry messages on this > newsgroup ? Apparently, you don't know what is compilation/gcc/gnat/ > Makefiles, maybe you should buy some books on it and read them. Perhaps it is you that should take your own advice. I proved that the hpux gnat1 3.09 binary cannot compile sem-case.adb with -O optimization as the directions say to compile it for HPUX. I did this because Robert questioned my ability to follow his directions. > Ok kid, I don't want to know if/where you work, but I'm glad I'm not > your boss. Please brush up on your English. This sentence of yours makes no sense. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-18 0:00 ` Samuel Tardieu 0 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Samuel Tardieu @ 1997-06-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Arnaud> Ok kid, I don't want to know if/where you work, but I'm glad Arnaud> I'm not your boss. Ronald> Please brush up on your English. This sentence of yours makes Ronald> no sense. When you have nothing more to say about the problem and do not want to stop then start criticizing the style... Sam -- Samuel Tardieu -- sam@ada.eu.org ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-13 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-13 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-16 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Pascal Obry 1 sibling, 2 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > First, I am Robert, not Bob :-) Sorry, you are correct. You have no slack. > Second, we do our best to give accurate directions for building from > sources. Generally we are quite successful, since many knowledgable > people can indeed build successfully, even if they are not our customers. > Of course if they are our customers, then we provide whatever help they > need. That was your best? Ok. I'll take your word for it. > Your difficulties might be incompetence, or something you have overlooked, > or a glitch in the instructions, or a wrong patch somewhere, or a wrong > version of something, but the point is that we are not the slightest bit > interested in spending time to investigate which on a volunteer basis. Might be? I could have sworn you said it was without doubt. Please check your ego at the door, Robert. > I do not know quite what you want me to admit as wrong. All I have every > claimed is that a lot of people have managed to build from sources, and that > we do not care to spend any time helping people build from sources unless > they are our customers, and finally, that all binary versions of GNAT have > been bootstrapped by us (it is actually impossible for us to prepare a binary > version without bootstrapping, since the process of preparing a binary version > is part of the run that does a bootstrap). I have successfully built from sources up to 3.07. After 3.07, some patches were introduced that apparently broke -O optimization for the pa-risc platform (-O2 optimization has been broken, and documented as such, since at least 2.04). I should probably tell you that compiling from sources with -g only won't bootstrap either. In 3.09, the binary release end-user is forced to examine the object code to see whether one gets correctly compiled code with -O or with -g. You are apparently very proud of this result. > The fact that you cannot build from sources would be a concern to us if you > were a customer, but since you are not, it is not. As i said before, we do > our best to make the instructions for building from sources complete and > accurate, but we make absolutely NO guarantees that these instructions are > complete or accurate. I see. Apparently, you have no customers on the hpux platform as of the 3.09 binary release. > You seen to continue to expect me or us to spend time looking through your > build attempts. Sorry, won't happen if you are not a customer! We are a > commercial company, not a help-Ronald-with-his-problems-at-no-cost > organization! My post was a bug report, and a suggestion that perhaps you not distribute binaries with broken optimizers for the 3.10 release as you did with the 3.09 release. Apparently (being money-grubbers), ACT cannot assure quality, but only ensure the lack thereof in some of it's binary releases. I accept your plea of ignorance in this regard. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-06-20 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Pascal Obry 1 sibling, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole saysw <<I see. Apparently, you have no customers on the hpux platform as of the 3.09 binary release. > You seen to continue to expect me or us to spend time looking through your > build attempts. Sorry, won't happen if you are not a customer! We are a > commercial company, not a help-Ronald-with-his-problems-at-no-cost > organization! My post was a bug report, and a suggestion that perhaps you not distribute binaries with broken optimizers for the 3.10 release as you did with the 3.09 release. Apparently (being money-grubbers), ACT cannot assure quality, but only ensure the lack thereof in some of it's binary releases. I accept your plea of ignorance in this regard. >> We have a number of large customers on HPUX. They were using 3.09 when it was the current release, most of them have by now switched to 3.10 which is the current product release. As usual, this will be released publicly in the future. I must say that the logic that says "I, Ronald Cole, have failed in attempting to build from sources, therefore no other customers are using this successfully", entirely elludes me. If your definition of money-grubber is someone who refuses to provide you free help and assistance, yes, I am afraid that we fall into this category. I imagine your local supermarket also is guilty. As for ignorance. Yes, I am ignorant of your specific problem, because we have not looked at it. I simply deleted your long post. If indeed you think of it as a bug report, then bug reports get submitted to report@gnat.com. Posting them to CLA will not help get them fixed! Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-20 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-22 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-20 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > We have a number of large customers on HPUX. They were using 3.09 when it > was the current release, most of them have by now switched to 3.10 which is > the current product release. As usual, this will be released publicly in > the future. I must say that the logic that says "I, Ronald Cole, have failed > in attempting to build from sources, therefore no other customers are using > this successfully", entirely elludes me. That's not what I said at all, Robert. > As for ignorance. Yes, I am ignorant of your specific problem, because we > have not looked at it. I simply deleted your long post. If indeed you think > of it as a bug report, then bug reports get submitted to report@gnat.com. > Posting them to CLA will not help get them fixed! You can save yourself a lot of grief here, Robert, by reading what I wrote and by not putting words into my mouth. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-20 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-22 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar ` (3 more replies) 0 siblings, 4 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-22 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > We have a number of large customers on HPUX. They were using 3.09 when it > was the current release, most of them have by now switched to 3.10 which is > the current product release. As usual, this will be released publicly in > the future. GNAT is based on GCC, right? What section of the GPL are you relying on to justify making binary releases of modified GPL software to your paying clients and refusing to make the source code available to the public at the same time? Under Section 3 of the GPL, it seems clear that once you distribute an object code work based on a GPL'd program, you must release the source code concurrently. And why hasn't the text of the GPL been included in your previous source distributions? -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-22 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole said <<dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > We have a number of large customers on HPUX. They were using 3.09 when it > was the current release, most of them have by now switched to 3.10 which is > the current product release. As usual, this will be released publicly in > the future. GNAT is based on GCC, right? What section of the GPL are you relying on to justify making binary releases of modified GPL software to your paying clients and refusing to make the source code available to the public at the same time? Under Section 3 of the GPL, it seems clear that once you distribute an object code work based on a GPL'd program, you must release the source code concurrently. And why hasn't the text of the GPL been included in your previous source distributions? -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B >> Some confusions here. First there is no requirement that we release anything at all to the public. Ronald you may want to look up the GPL yourself, it has no such requirment at all. The requirement is that we make available sources on request to anyone to whom we make objects available. Also there is no requirement to "release" the source code, just to make it available at a reasonable copying charge. (as I say, Ronald, you should carefully read the GPL, since you seem to have some misconceptions about it). However, we do in fact release binary versions, though we are not required to do so, and in accordance with the GPL, we do indeed release sources for these binary versions. As to file COPYING being missing, I will investigate, for convenience it should be in the release, although you can always get a copy as noted in the headers. We are strong supporters of the GPL, and carefully follow it, and insist that all users of GNAT also follow it (this in practice only restricts people making modificatoins to the compiler, since the runtime is released under a modified GPL that places almost no restrictins in practice on its use). We often find that people have strange misconceptions about the GPL, in particular they think that you are required to distribute stuff, you are not! and that you are required to distribute sources free, you are not. The distinction is important, we like people to know that we take the extra effort to make versions of GNAT public not because we have to, but because we choose to, since we think it is valuable to the Ada community. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-22 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-23 0:00 ` Richard Kenner 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Larry Kilgallen 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Corey Minyard 3 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Richard Kenner @ 1997-06-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <m2oh8ydzt8.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net> Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> writes: >Under Section 3 of the GPL, it seems clear that once you distribute an >object code work based on a GPL'd program, you must release the source >code concurrently. This is a common misconception. See the FSF web pages for a more detailed discussion of this issue. In general, the GPL does not (and cannot) impose any requirement to distribute anything at all, nor to make anything available in any way. It imposes precisely two requirements: (1) to not put any restrictions on redistribution and (2) to make sources available when something is distributed in binary form. The latter includes a requirement that the fee for such distribution be limited to cost. This is the only requirement on limiting prices in the GPL and is because it would otherwise be possible to effectively not provide the sources by setting a very high price on them. Here is Section 3 that you reference. Note that there are options (a) and (b) that would apply to your scenario. You act as though (a) was the only option. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-22 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner @ 1997-06-23 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1997-06-27 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Corey Minyard 3 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1997-06-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <m2oh8ydzt8.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net>, Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> writes: > dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: >> We have a number of large customers on HPUX. They were using 3.09 when it >> was the current release, most of them have by now switched to 3.10 which is >> the current product release. As usual, this will be released publicly in >> the future. > > GNAT is based on GCC, right? What section of the GPL are you relying > on to justify making binary releases of modified GPL software to your > paying clients and refusing to make the source code available to the > public at the same time? Under Section 3 of the GPL, it seems clear > that once you distribute an object code work based on a GPL'd program, > you must release the source code concurrently. I thought the rule was merely that one had to distribute source to those to whom one distributed the binary, without restriction on their right to redistribute. Certainly requiring an innovator to engage in distribution to other individuals would be an onerous burden. Since ACT chooses to use the Internet for their distributions anyway they can make public "distributions" cheaply, but the fact that they do so should not burden them any more than any other innovator. The general way of getting the sources would then be to find one of those large customers who are paying for support. I would advise a gentler approach than has been used in this thread. Larry Kilgallen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Larry Kilgallen @ 1997-06-27 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) writes: > I thought the rule was merely that one had to distribute source to those > to whom one distributed the binary, without restriction on their right > to redistribute. After re-reading the GNU Manifesto, it's clear that Stallman only wants to make sure that one can get the source code to any GPL'd binary one finds himself in possession of. Even though Stallman pays lip service to Kantian ethics ("Since I do not like the consequences that result if everyone hoards information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so. Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity." [GNU Manifesto]), it would appear that the GPL is powerless to prevent the following scenario: MAKE MONEY FAST HOARDING GPL'D SOFTWARE Version 1, June 1997 1. Make very useful enhancements to software that Stallman and others have worked hard on to make "free". 2. GPL those useful enhancements. 3. Find companies that are willing to pay big bucks for said enhancements. 4. Said companies, after paying through the nose for GPL'd software, are unwilling to re-distribute because the GPL apparently only obligates one to distribute source if one distributes binaries. (Why would someone want to incur this obligation for something they had to pay a lot of money to acquire in the first place?) Thus, as an implementation of the "Golden Rule", the GPL loses. > The general way of getting the sources would then be to find one of > those large customers who are paying for support. I would advise a > gentler approach than has been used in this thread. Doubtful ACT will ever give out it's client list. I know I wouldn't give out mine. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-27 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Larry Kilgallen 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald said <<Doubtful ACT will ever give out it's client list. I know I wouldn't give out mine. >> Well certainly we won't give anyone a complete client list, since many of our clients would not appreicate this kind of publicity. However, in cases where we have permission from clients, we are generally happy to publicize the fact that they are clients, and have often done so in the past. We are otherwise highly protective of our clients interests, and respect their wishes for not having their names revealed, as I am sure people perfectly well understand. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-27 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-28 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1997-06-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <m2u3ijkf7d.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net>, Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> writes: > that the GPL is powerless to prevent the following scenario: On further investigation, I find the GPL is also powerless to prevent my car from running out of gasoline. There have been 3 other software licensing schemes discussed, and any of them could be adopted by someone writing software. Feel free to adopt one and write an Ada compiler using those rules. Reopen this topic when the compiler passes the validation tests. Larry Kilgallen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-27 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Larry Kilgallen @ 1997-06-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-06-29 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 2 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald says << MAKE MONEY FAST HOARDING GPL'D SOFTWARE Version 1, June 1997 1. Make very useful enhancements to software that Stallman and others have worked hard on to make "free". 2. GPL those useful enhancements. 3. Find companies that are willing to pay big bucks for said enhancements. 4. Said companies, after paying through the nose for GPL'd software, are unwilling to re-distribute because the GPL apparently only obligates one to distribute source if one distributes binaries. (Why would someone want to incur this obligation for something they had to pay a lot of money to acquire in the first place?) >> Well I guess Ronald finally understands the GPL :-) In practice this scenario is of limited likelihood, and that is why it has not happened in practice. If one charged "big bucks" for the enhancements you had made, and if companies were willing to pay the big bucks, then an obvious thing happens: 1. If you charge say $1 million for your wonderfgul enhancements 2. And lots of companies are willing to pay $1 million 3. Then someone will buy it for $1 million 4. And undercut your business by selling it for the bargain price of say $200,000 But as I have said all along, there is nothing that requires you to distribute something you do under the GPL. One of the freedoms it confers is the freedom to distribute your work to whomever you please. The ultimate hoarding that can occur is if someone makes wonderful software and keeps it to themselves completely, but no one in the GNU world thinks for a monment that this should be prevented. As I have frequently noted, there is nothing that requires ACT to continue to make binary versions of GNAT available. It is something we choose to do as a service to the Ada community. Ron will just have to wait like everyone else for the public release of 3.10 which will happen in due time when we judge it to be appropriate. At that time Ron can pick up a copy (whose availability is made possible by ACT customers who do pay for support :-) and start griping about 3.10 :-) Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies P.S. I quite realize that there are people with quite extreme views on how software should be distributed and shared, but you should not assume that everyone else shares these views. Now if Ron would put his energy into providing free software, rather than trying to get hold of 3.10 before we consider it ready for public release, that would be more helpful. But I guess the communistic view always appeals more to those who need what they do not have, as opposed to those who have what they do not need :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-29 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 David Kastrup ` (3 more replies) 0 siblings, 4 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-29 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > Well I guess Ronald finally understands the GPL :-) Yes, Stallman left a hole in the GPL big enough for you to drive your truck through and set up a toll gate. > In practice this scenario is of limited likelihood, and that is why it > has not happened in practice. If one charged "big bucks" for the enhancements > you had made, and if companies were willing to pay the big bucks, then an > obvious thing happens: > > 1. If you charge say $1 million for your wonderfgul enhancements > > 2. And lots of companies are willing to pay $1 million > > 3. Then someone will buy it for $1 million > > 4. And undercut your business by selling it for the bargain price of > say $200,000 This assumes that the company that paid big bugs for a solution is willing to "burden" themselves with the GPL's redistribution requirements in order to recoup their costs. There are many other less-painful ways to recoup costs that do not benefit free software, and so I think it's likelihood isn't as limited as you appear to think it is. > But as I have said all along, there is nothing that requires you to > distribute something you do under the GPL. One of the freedoms it confers > is the freedom to distribute your work to whomever you please. The > ultimate hoarding that can occur is if someone makes wonderful software > and keeps it to themselves completely, but no one in the GNU world thinks > for a monment that this should be prevented. It's your choice to distribute your work under the GPL. Once one chooses to distribute their work to person-A under the GPL, one should not be allowed to say "no" if person-B asks for a copy. That is why Richard wrote the following: "Thus, there's no requirement to make a public announcement of a source release to accompany the binary release, but you may have to provide the sources to any number of people other than those who got the binary directly from you, if they request it." This is just a reiteration of the Kantian philosophy that is supposed to be embodied in the GPL. All I would like is a provision in the GPL that prevents people from doing what you did. Perhaps I can convince Richard of the importance of including his statement in the GPL before gcc-2.8 is released. > Now if Ron would put his energy into providing free software, rather > than trying to get hold of 3.10 before we consider it ready for > public release, that would be more helpful. You yourself said that 3.10 is your "current production release". Do your customers know that you consider that it's not even ready for public release? And why would I want to provide free software to the world under a licensing agreement that makes it less-than-freely- available to everyone? > But I guess the communistic view always appeals more to those who > need what they do not have, as opposed to those who have what they > do not need :-) It sure does. That's why you are using the gcc backend instead of writing one yourself. The GPL loophole appeals to your sense of greed. If you really were to "walk the walk", you wouldn't say no to my request for a copy because you would be making your money just charging for support. I guess you're afraid of free market competition. Besides, Communism forbids the ownership of property, so I think you meant to say "socialistic view". Regardless, use of the GPL on one's work is voluntary and is thus libertarian. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-29 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-30 0:00 ` David Kastrup 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: David Kastrup @ 1997-06-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2014 bytes --] Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> writes: > It's your choice to distribute your work under the GPL. Once one > chooses to distribute their work to person-A under the GPL, one > should not be allowed to say "no" if person-B asks for a copy. No, no, NOOO! That way nobody will put anything under the GPL because it would legally require him to set up a proper distribution service. You can't demand that from freeware authors. In fact, the GPL expressively frees the author of software from having to hassle out the details of how to best distribute his software, and leave that to others and in particular the market (it does not impose any cost restrictions on this process). This, of course, also means that if you're a lousy distributor (or uploader), your software might not get anywhere worth noting. But to hold freeware authors responsible for their lack of resources or management when they provide something for free is foolish. Fortunately, the GPL does *not* demand that you're required to be a proper distributor, *unless* you choose to make only binaries available (in which case you are required to have the infrastructure for providing the source). If you don't distribute binaries without source, you're complying to the GPL, regardless of how few people you are distributing to. The GPL serves just a few purposes: that no crippleware without source gets effectively distributed (people should at least always get the right to the source together with binaries), and that there are no limits to redistribution other than that which would stop these freedoms short. I certainly would not want to have people go to the slammer because they put something under the GPL and then their Internet connection breaks down after they put out the announcement. -- David Kastrup Phone: +49-234-700-5570 Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Fax: +49-234-709-4209 Institut f�r Neuroinformatik, Universit�tsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-29 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 David Kastrup @ 1997-06-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole ` (2 more replies) 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Fergus Henderson 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 3 siblings, 3 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald says <<You yourself said that 3.10 is your "current production release". Do your customers know that you consider that it's not even ready for public release? And why would I want to provide free software to the world under a licensing agreement that makes it less-than-freely- available to everyone? >> Right, when a production release is first made, it obviously has not been as widely used as a production release that has been made some time ago and widely used. When we first make a prerelease, those customers that want to go to the new version, to get the benefit of bug releases and new features can. Some choose to, some choose not to. Those who choose to move to the new release know that we will provide immediate help to them if there are any problems. This does not guarantee freedom from problems, but it helps to reduce the risk. For example, if there is a slight installation glitch that causes trouble on some particular hardware configuration, we can easily help anyone who runs into it, and let people know how to get around it. But a public release is a much different thing. Thousands will use it who have no access to support from us or from any one else. It is therefore much more important that public releases be glitch free, particularly when it comes to installation problems. That is why we delay making public releases until we think that all the glitches have been ironed out. Some of our customers wait until well after the public release to switch versions, which seems quite reasonable, others want to move immediately to the new release. Ronald is all upset over "what we have done to him", but all we have done to him is to tell him to wait until we think that the version is ready for public distribution. As we all know, Ronald had trouble with the 3.09 public release, perhaps that says we should have waited LONGER rathern than SHORTER to distribute 3.09, though one cannot be sure that all problems will be solved at any time. Incidentally Richard Stallman is definitely supportive of the notion of not releasing free software before it is in an appropriate state. The Linux folks have often argued that the Linux distributes should contain the latest GCC snapshots, since obviously they fix bugs, but such an attitude is not a good idea in the long run. Sure, everyone would like to be able to get the latest and greatest GNAT as early as possible, but we do not think it will help the community to have very frequent releases which have not been thoroughly user tested. We are willing to let customers have versions earlier, precisely because we know we are there to help if there are any problems. Actually Ronald's experience in failing to build from sources is a really good illustration of the problem. If Ronald had been a customer, then of course we would be spending time with him to get around the problem (whether the problem is our problem or the customer's problem is not the issue in this situation, getting around the problem *is* the only issue). On the other hand, Ronald's frustration with 3.09 is a good example of what we want to avoid happening by making sure that public releases are in good shape before they occur. This is simply a matter of quality control, which seems in our judgment to be as important for public releases of GNAT as it is for any other customer releases that we make. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-02 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-07-03 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Joerg Rodemann 1997-07-03 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Daniel R Risacher 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-07-02 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > As we all know, Ronald had trouble with the 3.09 > public release, perhaps that says we should have waited LONGER rathern > than SHORTER to distribute 3.09, though one cannot be sure that all > problems will be solved at any time. You put Richard Kenner's lastest patches in the publicly released gcc-272.dif the day before you released it. Clearly, they weren't well tested. So, if you aren't willing to build and test the public binary releases before you release the source, I would prefer that you didn't allow last-minute changes to your "well tested" prereleases as a matter of policy. Particularly, if you're not going to make "platform" fix releases (like gcc-2.7.2.1.tar.gz and emacs-19.34b.tar.gz were). I'll even go so far as to say that you could have just put a newer gcc-272.dif file on cs.nyu.edu with a note explaining the problem! Not quite a year ago, I was able to build a combined gcc-2.7.2, gnat-3.07, and g77-0.5.18 that bootstrapped perfectly with -O on HPUX. That is a quite a tribute to Richard Kenner and his work on gcc! I would hope to be able to do the same with gcc-2.7.2.2, gnat-3.10, and g77-0.5.20. I am willing to wait for a well-tested public 3.10, just like I'm willing to wait for gcc-2.8. I am very confident that when gcc-2.8.0 is finally released that it will bootstrap with -O2 on the HPUX platform! > Incidentally Richard Stallman is definitely supportive of the notion of > not releasing free software before it is in an appropriate state. The > Linux folks have often argued that the Linux distributes should contain > the latest GCC snapshots, since obviously they fix bugs, but such an > attitude is not a good idea in the long run. Linux is very stable because public "snapshots" are made available quite frequently for a lot of people to build and report problems they encounter. Linux development is truly a community project. I generally don't mess with the development releases until Linus declares that he is freezing features and readying the next stable version, at which point I lend a hand in making it very stable by building it on as many different platforms/configurations as I am able to. > other hand, Ronald's frustration with 3.09 is a good example of what we > want to avoid happening by making sure that public releases are in good > shape before they occur. I'd have to agree that it was pretty foolish to make a public release of 3.09 that depended on untested/unproven last-minute patches to gcc. I'll reserve judgement on 3.10 until you release it publicly. > This is simply a matter of quality control, which seems in our judgment > to be as important for public releases of GNAT as it is for any other > customer releases that we make. Then you might want to seriously consider building and testing the public binary releases before you release the source publicly. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-07-03 0:00 ` Joerg Rodemann 1997-07-03 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Daniel R Risacher 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Joerg Rodemann @ 1997-07-03 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert Dewar (dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu) wrote: > Ronald says > Incidentally Richard Stallman is definitely supportive of the notion of > not releasing free software before it is in an appropriate state. The > Linux folks have often argued that the Linux distributes should contain > the latest GCC snapshots, since obviously they fix bugs, but such an > attitude is not a good idea in the long run. > This is simply a matter of quality control, which seems in our judgment > to be as important for public releases of GNAT as it is for any other > customer releases that we make. In my opinion this is a very good point you made. Especially as Ada is --- at least in our mindset --- strongly connected with Software Quality or Quality Software. Certainly with Ada you could do the same crippled type of software one often finds in projects using C, C++ or else. At least the end users often seem not to care about anything like quality. Although they mutter if somethings goes wrong or worse (system crash, harddisk overwrite). So I believe it serves the Ada community very well if you provide us (and I'd like to thank you for making it publicly available to us) with a solid version of GNAT. this most probably will prohibit opinions and sensations that "Ada is not useful" just because the compiler is not good work. Surely we often hear these beliefs about Ada-83 in this group. As to the latest releases of any software my favourite route is: if you really need a new feature or you desire it like hell, try out the new ones. Otherwise stick to the running version until another one seems to be of the same quality. A collegue of mine is just fiddling around with his systems just because software X requires the latest release from Y which only runs in combination with the newest --- and totally incompatible --- release of Z. It gets really annoying if Y or Z are essential parts of a system like the OS itself or the development system. Greetings Joerg -- rodemann@mathematik.uni-ulm.de | Dipl.-Phys. Joerg S. Rodemann Phone: ++49-(0)711-5090670 | Flurstrasse 21, D-70372 Stuttgart, Germany -----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- rodemann@rus.uni-stuttgart.de | University of Stuttgart, Computing Center Phone: ++49-(0)711-685-5815 | Visualization Department, Office: 0.304 Fax: ++49-(0)711-678-7626 | Allmandring 30a, D-70550 Stuttgart, Germany ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-07-03 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Joerg Rodemann @ 1997-07-03 0:00 ` Daniel R Risacher 1997-07-04 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 David Kastrup 2 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Daniel R Risacher @ 1997-07-03 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) While I understand and sympathize completely with ACT's position, (as stated by Robert) I suggest that the more commonly used model for GNU software is to have separate "stable" and "bleeding edge" releases. Examples of this are Linux and the GIMP. You cannot set up Linux 2.1.43 without seeing many notices warning that it is a developmental, kernel-hacker's version. But you can download it just the same. I wouldn't expect anyone to provide support for 2.1.43 without being paid for it. The GIMP is similar. 0.54 is billed as a "mostly-stable" version, but developers (and patient users) have been playing with 0.99.x for a while. Support for 0.99 consists only of a mailing list of other users/developers. Guile has automatic, daily snapshots of the latest code available. I suggest this sort of policy might be a reasonable model for gnat distribution. I don't know; I don't use gnat, or Ada, for that matter. $2E-2, Dan Risacher >>>>> "Robert" == Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> writes: Robert> That is why we delay making public releases until we think Robert> that all the glitches have been ironed out. Some of our Robert> customers wait until well after the public release to Robert> switch versions, which seems quite reasonable, others want Robert> to move immediately to the new release. Robert> Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-07-03 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Daniel R Risacher @ 1997-07-04 0:00 ` David Kastrup 0 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: David Kastrup @ 1997-07-04 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2687 bytes --] Daniel R Risacher <risacher@worldnet.att.net> writes: > While I understand and sympathize completely with ACT's position, > (as stated by Robert) I suggest that the more commonly used model > for GNU software is to have separate "stable" and "bleeding edge" > releases. No, this is rather uncommon, except for few examples. In fact, *all* of the GNU software distributed by the FSF tends to be distributed mostly in what is considered a stable version (although typically some earlier versions are kept for safety). There is no explicit distinction into stable and development versions for public releases. > Examples of this are Linux and the GIMP. You cannot set up Linux > 2.1.43 without seeing many notices warning that it is a > developmental, kernel-hacker's version. But you can download it > just the same. I wouldn't expect anyone to provide support for > 2.1.43 without being paid for it. Depends on what you call "support". Actually, most of the support and development in the various Linux usenet groups focuses around the development versions, as there the most remains to be done. If you mean installation support by major Linux distributors, they will obviously support what they provide, and that will indeed typically be a "stable" version. > The GIMP is similar. 0.54 is billed as a "mostly-stable" version, > but developers (and patient users) have been playing with 0.99.x for > a while. Support for 0.99 consists only of a mailing list of other > users/developers. And what superior support is offered for 0.54? > Guile has automatic, daily snapshots of the latest code available. > I suggest this sort of policy might be a reasonable model for gnat > distribution. I don't know; I don't use gnat, or Ada, for that > matter. It is usually quite a hassle to provide compilable, useful source every day. At the very least, you have to use something like CVS for version control. For some smaller projects this trouble might not at all be worth the cost. There are added disadvantages if you give development versions to the public: you have to sort out bug information and user foolishnesses from sometimes inscrutible bug reports, and this can take more time than you want to invest in it. If you do alpha testing (giving out preliminary versions to selected testers only), you can sometimes be more productive. So, in short, I think that there are different models that can be used with justification. -- David Kastrup Phone: +49-234-700-5570 Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Fax: +49-234-709-4209 Institut f�r Neuroinformatik, Universit�tsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-29 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 David Kastrup 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-30 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 3 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Fergus Henderson @ 1997-06-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> writes: >dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: >> If one charged "big bucks" for the enhancements >> you had made, and if companies were willing to pay the big bucks, then an >> obvious thing happens: >> >> 1. If you charge say $1 million for your wonderfgul enhancements >> >> 2. And lots of companies are willing to pay $1 million >> >> 3. Then someone will buy it for $1 million >> >> 4. And undercut your business by selling it for the bargain price of >> say $200,000 > >This assumes that the company that paid big bugs for a solution is >willing to "burden" themselves with the GPL's redistribution >requirements in order to recoup their costs. No it doesn't. They can still undercut your business by selling your GPL'd software, with source, for $200,000. They don't need to distribute their own software at all, and they won't be "burdened". -- Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au> | "I have always known that the pursuit WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh> | of excellence is a lethal habit" PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-29 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Fergus Henderson @ 1997-06-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 3 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald says <<It sure does. That's why you are using the gcc backend instead of writing one yourself. The GPL loophole appeals to your sense of greed. If you really were to "walk the walk", you wouldn't say no to my request for a copy because you would be making your money just charging for support. I guess you're afraid of free market competition. >> The reason we say no to your request for a copy of the latest version is that we do not want you to waste time as you did on 3.09. Apparently, you expected free support on those problems, and got a bit upset when we declined. Since no free support will be available on 3.10 either, we will not give you a copy until we feel it is in reasonable shape for a public release. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-01 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Philip Brashear ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-07-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > The reason we say no to your request for a copy of the latest version is > that we do not want you to waste time as you did on 3.09. Well, this is certainly the first time you have said this! Your public release of 3.09 certainly was a waste of time on the HPUX platform... > Apparently, you expected free support on those problems, and got a > bit upset when we declined. This is a lie. All I did was report the optimizer bug to report@gnat.com back in early February. Richard Kenner kindly sent a patch, but I didn't test it out because I thought (erroneously, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight) that you would probably make a "patch" release (like are made for gcc or emacs when serious platform problems are encountered) right away. At no time did I demand that you fix it for me. Last month, I had heard that some of your customers were enjoying 3.10 on HPUX and so I asked if 3.10 for HPUX could at least compile itself according to your instructions. When you rather-rudely indicated that 1) yes, they were, and 2) yes, it could, I asked you for the source. > Since no free support will be available on 3.10 either, we will not > give you a copy until we feel it is in reasonable shape for a public > release. Since you distributed 3.09 publicly in such bad shape for the HPUX platform, I have reason to doubt that the public 3.10 will be any different. Additionally, I have reason to believe that your definition of "reasonable" adheres to a standard that is quite a bit lower than mine. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-07-02 0:00 ` Philip Brashear 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 James Rogers 1997-07-08 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Philip Brashear @ 1997-07-02 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Mr. Cole, Please give it up. This is getting VERY boring to the rest of the CLA community. Have you not noticed that you have little or no support in this crusade? There is a reason for this. At the very least, please consider nettiquite, and turn down the volume. Phil Brashear An unsupported use of GNAT ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Philip Brashear @ 1997-07-02 0:00 ` James Rogers 1997-07-03 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-07-08 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: James Rogers @ 1997-07-02 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole wrote: > > dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > > The reason we say no to your request for a copy of the latest version is > > that we do not want you to waste time as you did on 3.09. > > Well, this is certainly the first time you have said this! Your public > release of 3.09 certainly was a waste of time on the HPUX platform... > > > Apparently, you expected free support on those problems, and got a > > bit upset when we declined. > > Since no free support will be available on 3.10 either, we will not > > give you a copy until we feel it is in reasonable shape for a public > > release. The ACT WEB page certainly has some misleading information concerning support. On the URL www.gnat.com/ftp/html is the following: Downloading GNAT Current supported platforms and versions are as follows: GNAT 3.09 Alpha Digital Unix 4.0 GNAT 3.09 HP HPUX 10.x GNAT 3.09 x86 Linux ELF GNAT 3.09 SGI IRIX 5.3/6.2 GNAT 3.09 SNI SINIX 5.45 GNAT 3.09 Sparc Solaris 2.3/2.4/2.5.1 GNAT 3.09 Sparc SunOS 4.1.3 GNAT 3.09 Windows NT/Windows 95 GNAT 3.09 IBM OS/2 Warp GNAT 3.09 Powermac Machten GNAT 3.07 DOS Gnat is available from these FTP sites and mirrors. ---------------------------------------- I understand that ACT means that support is for a fee. Unfortunately, this is not stated or implied on this WEB page. Since the versions listed are available for free download, it is easy and not unreasonable to assume that *some* level of support is available to those who do not pay a fee. Perhaps the WEB page should read: Currently available versions are as follows: (Support for these versions is available for a fee) -- Jim Rogers ************************************************************* Team Ada ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 James Rogers @ 1997-07-03 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-03 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) James Rogers said <<The ACT WEB page certainly has some misleading information concerning support. On the URL www.gnat.com/ftp/html is the following: >> Right, I see how this could be misleading, we will eliminate this page right away. Thanks. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Philip Brashear 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 James Rogers @ 1997-07-08 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-07-10 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 2 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-08 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Just in case Ronald's latest post causes any further confusion, just let me repeat the point that anytime you see a binary GNAT release from ACT, it has *always* bootstrapped itself, since that is the way we build releases. RC may or may not succeed in repeating this process for HPUX 3.10, but certainly we have succeeded in doing the bootstrap at ACT. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-07-08 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-10 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-07-11 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-07-10 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > Just in case Ronald's latest post causes any further confusion, just let > me repeat the point that anytime you see a binary GNAT release from ACT, > it has *always* bootstrapped itself, since that is the way we build releases. > RC may or may not succeed in repeating this process for HPUX 3.10, but certainly we have > succeeded in doing the bootstrap at ACT. Yes, but should this latest rehash cause any *further* confusion, it has been demonstrated that the binary GNAT release for the HP PA-RISC is unable to compile two files in the GNAT source release with *any* level of optimization. This, Robert claims, was a release that, as a matter of policy, ACT held up until it was well-tested by customers "to ensure a quality product". All this demonstrates a couple of things: 1) customer driven testing is no substitute for quality/robustness testing. 2) the person who bootstrapped the port didn't deem the compiler crashes during the bootstrap serious enough to hold up releasing GNAT-3.09 publicly. 3) Robert is unafraid to bundle last minute, unverified, gcc patches into his public releases and undo any stated benefits for unsupported gnat users. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-07-10 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole @ 1997-07-11 0:00 ` Richard Kenner 0 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Richard Kenner @ 1997-07-11 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <m22056txii.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net> Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> writes: >Yes, but should this latest rehash cause any *further* confusion, it >has been demonstrated that the binary GNAT release for the HP PA-RISC >is unable to compile two files in the GNAT source release with *any* >level of optimization. That's simply not possible since the binary release was constructed by compiling all the sources files. There therefore must have been *some* set of options that compiled them. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-22 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Larry Kilgallen @ 1997-06-23 0:00 ` Corey Minyard 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar ` (2 more replies) 3 siblings, 3 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Corey Minyard @ 1997-06-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> writes: > > dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > > We have a number of large customers on HPUX. They were using 3.09 when it > > was the current release, most of them have by now switched to 3.10 which is > > the current product release. As usual, this will be released publicly in > > the future. > > GNAT is based on GCC, right? What section of the GPL are you relying > on to justify making binary releases of modified GPL software to your > paying clients and refusing to make the source code available to the > public at the same time? Under Section 3 of the GPL, it seems clear > that once you distribute an object code work based on a GPL'd program, > you must release the source code concurrently. The GPL never states that you have to make a public release or you have to give anything to anybody. It states that if you give someone a binary release, you have to give them source (which ACT does, the source is available to customers). It also says that you cannot restrict what someone does with what you give them (as long as they comply with GPL), so ACT asks customers not to release the sources, but it really cannot require them to. The GPL is not an easy document to read and requires careful reading to understand. Don't make rash statements about GPL without carefully reading it. It states that: 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) and ACT complies with a) since they supply code on the FTP site with the binary executables. What they do not seem to do, which disturbs me a little, is distribute the GCC base they use to build their stuff on their FTP site. Since the patches they supply don't apply perfectly, they are obviously using a patched GCC base and do not provide information about how to get it. But perhaps they are relying on b) above in the GPL for that specific part, which would be perfectly fine legally. I'd rather have it on the FTP site, though. > > And why hasn't the text of the GPL been included in your previous > source distributions? > Since it is a patch to GCC, it probably doesn't matter. It might be better to include it in the src/ada directory for the compiler sources just in case, though. The library sources are under a different license, so they don't apply. -- Corey Minyard Internet: minyard@acm.org Work: minyard@nortel.ca UUCP: minyard@wf-rch.cirr.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Corey Minyard @ 1997-07-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Cory says <<The GPL never states that you have to make a public release or you have to give anything to anybody. It states that if you give someone a binary release, you have to give them source (which ACT does, the source is available to customers). It also says that you cannot restrict what someone does with what you give them (as long as they comply with GPL), so ACT asks customers not to release the sources, but it really cannot require them to. >> To clarify here, we tell customers that we think it is in the best interests of GNAT if prereleases and wavefronts are not released generally (for all the reasons I have previously stated), but that is absolutely right, we cannot require it. This is a similar situation to the GCC snapshots, which are available on a limited basis, with a similar note that it is in the best interests of the GNU project if these snapshots are not distributed. But there too, it cannot be required, and in fact at least on one occasion, a public release of Linux on CD/ROM has included the snapshot sources, much to the consternation of FSF and Richard Stallman. Richard Stallman is in fact quite insistent on the undesirability of releasing snapshots generally. His concern is just like ours. It is one thing to have a single user run into difficulties under conditions where these difficulties can be immediately addressed. It is quite another to have a public release where there are problems. In the latter case, there will be general yelling and complaining, and this does not help the GCC community at all. I will reiterate that our release policies are geared to the needs of the general GNAT consuming public, which is a very large set of people at this stage, most of whom have very little expertise in getting arond problems (you would be amazed at the number of reports of installation problems we have that arise simply from not carefully following the installation instructions). Yes, there are a few enthusiasts who would like to fiddle with the absolutely latest version, but we do not gear our public release policies to this small group! P.S. When I mention Richard Stallman's insistence on the undesirability of releasing snapshots, I am reminded of an incident a while ago in which we discussed with him the possibility of releasing snapshots with one public version of GNAT. He got very agitated, and yelled at us (this was in person, not by email), and we quite understood this reaction :-) Note that the issue of figuring out appropriate release dates is one that all vendors of software face. The fact that software is free software really makes no difference at all. There are people who would love to get their hands on Windows 97 right now, but Microsoft has decided it is not ready yet. Sure, vendors may make mistakes, but the temptation is in the direction of releasing too early. Just the other day, I suggested an early public release of 3.10 to the team here, but the discussion overruled the suggestion, since people pointed out several points (including the issue of dragging in the tasking stuff all the time) that really need solving before the public release. You should understand that I am eager to get 3.10 out as early as possible, for one thing, I would like people to be able to use the super-neat SPITBOL stuff that I have added. But it is a long-term mistake to let this eagerness result in a premature release. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Corey Minyard 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-01 0:00 ` Richard Kenner 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Richard Kenner @ 1997-07-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <m2n2oiknxv.fsf@acm.org> Corey Minyard <minyard@acm.org> writes: >What they do not seem to do, which disturbs me a little, is distribute >the GCC base they use to build their stuff on their FTP site. Since >the patches they supply don't apply perfectly, they are obviously >using a patched GCC base and do not provide information about how to >get it. No, the patch file applies to an unmodified GCC 2.7.2. It is applied to that base every night automatically. Yes, some of the patches were originally derived from different GCC version of GCC sources, so the line numbers aren't exact, but those exact patches are applied to the 2.7.2 sources each night to do builds. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Corey Minyard 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner @ 1997-07-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Corey says <<What they do not seem to do, which disturbs me a little, is distribute the GCC base they use to build their stuff on their FTP site. Since the patches they supply don't apply perfectly, they are obviously using a patched GCC base and do not provide information about how to get it. But perhaps they are relying on b) above in the GPL for that specific part, which would be perfectly fine legally. I'd rather have it on the FTP site, though. >> Generally the patches we supply *should* apply cleanly to the base. That is certainly the intention. When it is not the case, it is a glitch. Right now, the patch situation is quite messy, because of the very large delta between 2.7.1 and 2.8. Virtually all of our gcc patches are incorporated into 2.8, but not all the 2.8 patches are incorporated into our patch file, only the ones that Ada needs. Keeping this straight is not easy, and that is especially true in the case of the many different targets we support. We are expecting gcc 2.8 to be released very soon, and this should greatly simplify the issue of getting the right version of gcc sources and patches (at least for a transitory moment, the GNAT patch file will become empty or very close to it). The current gcc-272.dif is nearly 6000 lines long (this file originall started out as a very small file of a few critical patches). Furthermore, things are more complicated now because of the appearence of the 2.7.2.1 release (this was a kind of semi-official release demanded by the Linux community to fix one not very important bug that got blown out of proportion), so now we need a gcc-2721.dif as well. As I say, these problems should completely disappear when gcc 2.8 is issued. One of the good things here is that all GNAT patches do get reflected in the main GCC sources that FSF develops almost immediately (that's because the developer of these patches, and the maintainer of the FSF version of GCC are the same person :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-17 0:00 ` Pascal Obry 1 sibling, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Pascal Obry @ 1997-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1287 bytes --] Well speaking for myself, I have been able to compile (and bootstrap) GNAT since version 1.x. This is not hard at all if you follow the instructions. I've been using -O2 to build GNAT itself and I've never experienced any problem... I've done this under Solaris and SUN-OS so maybe HPUX is not as easy but the instructions given by ACT was correct, so why should they gave us wrong instructions for HPUX ? Anyway they provide a binary distribution for HPUX so they were able to build it no ! Pascal. -- --|------------------------------------------------------------ --| Pascal Obry Team-Ada Member | --| | --| EDF-DER-IPN-SID- Ing�nierie des Syst�mes d'Informations | --| | --| Bureau G1-010 e-mail: pascal.obry@der.edfgdf.fr | --| 1 Av G�n�ral de Gaulle voice : +33-1-47.65.50.91 | --| 92141 Clamart CEDEX fax : +33-1-47.65.50.07 | --| FRANCE | --|------------------------------------------------------------ --| --| http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pascal_obry --| --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination" ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-13 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-16 0:00 ` Joerg Rodemann 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-24 0:00 ` what DOES the GPL really say? Spam Hater 1 sibling, 2 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Joerg Rodemann @ 1997-06-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Hello folks! Ronald Cole (ronald@ridgenet.net) wrote: > Why do your excuses keep changing, Bob? And why didn't you answer my > question at the end of my post? I think we all know why... > I've clearly demonstrated that the gnat1 binary in the hpux > distribution is broken... for both your supported *and* unsupported > users. Plain and simple. Of course, you're too proud to fix it or to > document the actual "fiddling around" required to bootstrap on this > platform in the src/README.UNIX file because that would be tantamount > to admitting that you might actually have been wrong. Makes me thinking...wouldn't it be nice if EVERYTHING I am unable to install, to build or to develop --- is definitely broken? For if I can't do it, nobody ca do it? I think rather no. Maybe building GNAT is not an easy thing, I do not know. Although I managed a whole lot of software installations also from source until now I failed to build GNAT. Most problably this was due to lack of both time and experience (that was also my first try to compile gcc). On the otherhand a collegue of mine sure succeded in compiling, linking and installing gcc with C/C++ and Ada-support (That was GNAT 3.03 or 3.04.) within two days. And it only took him that long because the machine was not the fastest at that time. As far as I remember he too had some problems which occured due to usage of the wrong optimization level. Sure it was explained in the installation instructions. :-} We just did not look at it carefully enough. So is GNAT 3.10 broken? I very strongly believe this is not the case: using a lot of binary versions for quite a time now --- on different plattform --- I am sure the binaries are working. And those binaries must be built from some source, don't they? And I can't imagine that Mr. Dewar or anyone else at ACT will change their releases just in order to leave YOU unable to build that release. Especially if there are some folks who tell you that they've succeeded. Well, just a few thoughts...if I am able to admit something is or at least was beyond my capabilies --- why can't you? Just blaming other people does not help you very much, especially if you do it in such an aggressive and unpolite way. Have nice day Yours Joerg -- Dipl.-Phys. Joerg S. Rodemann rodemann@mathematik.uni-ulm.de Flurstrasse 21 --- D-70372 Stuttgart --- Tel. (0711) 5090670 !!! My former address at Blaustein is no longer valid !!! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Joerg Rodemann @ 1997-06-17 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1997-06-24 0:00 ` what DOES the GPL really say? Spam Hater 1 sibling, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1997-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) rodemann@mathematik.uni-ulm.de (Joerg Rodemann) writes: > Makes me thinking...wouldn't it be nice if EVERYTHING I am unable to install, > to build or to develop --- is definitely broken? For if I can't do it, nobody > ca do it? I never said I was unable to install their release. I only said that the gcc-272.dif file seems to contain patches that break the -O level optimization for some files. (If you throw in the patches that come with g77-0.5.20, the stage2 gnat1 coughs up sig 11 on every invocation.) This is not insignificant since it was the only optimization level that could be used throughout to build GNAT on the pa-risc for all 3.xx releases up to and including 3.07. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: what DOES the GPL really say? 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar (?) @ 1997-06-24 0:00 ` Spam Hater 1997-06-25 0:00 ` Richard Kenner -1 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Spam Hater @ 1997-06-24 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) > Robert Dewar wrote: > We often find that people have strange misconceptions > about the GPL, ... First, I am NOT trying to defend R. Cole's continuing hogwash. ACT is, IMHO, fully compliant with the GPL, and the "special exception" in the headers of all their RTS files is very reasonable. HOWEVER, several people have said on Usenet or in direct e-mail that I can use GPL'd source code in my project and still retain full rights (actually my employer's rights) on the rest of the code. If this were true, there would be no need for GNAT's "special exception." Note that I am NOT talking about the GNU "Library" License. Here is the relevant paragraph of the GPL: 2.b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. So, if any part of my program contains any part (or derivation of) their program, I have two choices: 1. Distribute my program "as a whole" under the terms of the GPL 2. Don't distribute my program. (If you play with my ball, you play by my rules.) David Weller's "Ada Community License" and GNAT's "special exception" are very welcome relief from the above restriction. I am sympathetic to the goals of the Free Software Foundation, but I think that--by trying too hard to coerce other people to make software "free"--the above paragraph is counter-productive to those goals. It forces me to re-invent things just so my employers can say they own them. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wes Groleau, Hughes Defense Communications, Fort Wayne, IN USA Senior Software Engineer - AFATDS Tool-smith Wanna-be wwgrol AT pseserv3.fw.hac.com Don't send advertisements to this domain unless asked! All disk space on fw.hac.com hosts belongs to either Hughes Defense Communications or the United States government. Using email to store YOUR advertising on them is trespassing! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: what DOES the GPL really say? 1997-06-24 0:00 ` what DOES the GPL really say? Spam Hater @ 1997-06-25 0:00 ` Richard Kenner 1997-06-25 0:00 ` Wes Groleau 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Richard Kenner @ 1997-06-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) [I've changed the newsgroup from gnu.gcc, which doesn't exist, to gnu.misc.discuss, which is the proper newsgroup to discuss the GPL.] In article <33B014E3.3343@no.such.com> Spam Hater <no.such.user@no.such.com> writes: >HOWEVER, several people have said on Usenet or in direct e-mail >that I can use GPL'd source code in my project and still retain >full rights (actually my employer's rights) on the rest of the code. Since you are getting into what is probably the trickiest part of the GPL, we need to be very precise here. Here I'm assuming "use GPL'd source code" means to create a single work that contains both your code and GPL code, not something like using a GPL'd tool such as emacs or gcc to compile you program. In that case, you can indeed do as the people suggested: there is no problem in *creating* such a work, to which both the GPL applies and to which you retain full rights to your own code. >So, if any part of my program contains any part (or derivation of) >their program, I have two choices: >1. Distribute my program "as a whole" under the terms of the GPL >2. Don't distribute my program. That's correct and exactly the status of the resulting work. If you want to continue to view your code as proprietary, then you have two different copyright terms for pieces of the code and the only way to satisfy both is not to distribute the work at all. >(If you play with my ball, you play by my rules.) > >I am sympathetic to the goals of the Free Software Foundation, but I >think that--by trying too hard to coerce other people to make >software "free"--the above paragraph is counter-productive to those >goals. It forces me to re-invent things just so my employers can >say they own them. That may be, but the whole point is that people have spent considerable amount of time, usually without any compensation, to create the GPL'd code in question. They are doing this because they want to help the public in general and don't want their work to be used to help somebody else do something that is against their philosophy. This does not seem particularly unreasonable to me. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: what DOES the GPL really say? 1997-06-25 0:00 ` Richard Kenner @ 1997-06-25 0:00 ` Wes Groleau 1997-06-25 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Stanbrough 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Wes Groleau @ 1997-06-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Richard Kenner wrote: > > [I've changed the newsgroup from gnu.gcc, which doesn't exist, to > gnu.misc.discuss, which is the proper newsgroup to discuss the GPL.] > > In article <33B014E3.3343@no.such.com> Wes Groleau <no.such.user@no.such.com> wrote (slightly re-worded for clarity): > >HOWEVER, several people have said on Usenet or in direct e-mail > >that I can re-use GPL'd source code as part of my program and > >still retain full rights (actually my employer's rights) on the > >rest of the code. > > ..... you can indeed do as the people suggested: there is no > problem in *creating* such a work, to which both the GPL applies and > to which you retain full rights to your own code. > > >So, if any part of my program contains any part (or derivation of) > >their program, I have two choices: > >1. Distribute my program "as a whole" under the terms of the GPL > >2. Don't distribute my program. > > That's correct and exactly the status of the resulting work. If you > [must] continue to view [the] code as proprietary, then you have two > different copyright terms for pieces of the code and the only way to > satisfy both is not to distribute the work at all. However, that is not what people have been telling me. Several times I have been reprimanded for saying I cannot incorporate a particular bit of code due to the GPL. > >I am sympathetic to the goals of the Free Software Foundation, but I > >think that--by trying too hard to coerce other people to make > >software "free"--the above paragraph is counter-productive to those > >goals. It forces me to re-invent things just so my employers can > >say they own them. > > That may be, but the whole point is that people have spent > considerable amount of time, usually without any compensation, to > create the GPL'd code in question. They are doing this because they > want to help the public in general and don't want their work to be > used to help somebody else do something that is against their > philosophy. This does not seem particularly unreasonable to me. It does not seem unreasonable to me either. But David Weller's approach, and the GNAT approach are far more helpful in that they allow me to actually use the code, not just look at it. Call me (adjective) if you want for cooperating with software hoarders, but I tilt at bigger windmills. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wes Groleau, Hughes Defense Communications, Fort Wayne, IN USA Senior Software Engineer - AFATDS Tool-smith Wanna-be wwgrol AT pseserv3.fw.hac.com Don't send advertisements to this domain unless asked! All disk space on fw.hac.com hosts belongs to either Hughes Defense Communications or the United States government. Using email to store YOUR advertising on them is trespassing! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-25 0:00 ` Wes Groleau @ 1997-06-25 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 2 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Dale Stanbrough @ 1997-06-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Richard Kenner writes: ">So, if any part of my program contains any part (or derivation of) >their program, I have two choices: >1. Distribute my program "as a whole" under the terms of the GPL >2. Don't distribute my program. That's correct and exactly the status of the resulting work. If you want to continue to view your code as proprietary, then you have two different copyright terms for pieces of the code and the only way to satisfy both is not to distribute the work at all." ...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? Dale ?:-/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-25 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Stanbrough @ 1997-07-01 0:00 ` Richard Kenner 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1 sibling, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Richard Kenner @ 1997-07-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) 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. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-06-25 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Stanbrough 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner @ 1997-07-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 James Rogers 1 sibling, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Dale asks <<...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? >> First of all you need to look at the GPL itself, not some summary of it on CLA, and interpet the language there. Generally, if two parts of the same system are separate Unix processes, with relatively thin interfaces, the requirements will be met. Linking to some parser routines is obviously past the line and is not allowed, dynamically loading GNAT will generally be fine, writing a GUI will certainly be fine. As is the case with any legal document, you have to look at the contract terms, and look at the specific case to make sure that you are not violating the contract. If you are in doubt, you can consult your own lawyer, or you can ask the copyright holder, who may or may not enlighten you (the holder of the copyright is under no obligation to give you advance notice of what might or might not violate the copyright, and may well not be willing to give you such advance notice if it is a dubious case). As an example of a dubious case, trying to make a compiler by having the GNAT front end write a file containing the tree, and a separate proprietary backend reading the tree is probably dubious, and Richard Stallman, as representative of the copyright holder, has been unwilling to give an opinion as to whether this does or does not violate the conditions of the GPL (he would of course show more interest in the subject if anyone actually did this!) On the other hand, a GUI front end for GNAT, such as the many ones that have already been created, seems absolutely fine for everyone, although so far, most of these GUI's have themselves been free software, which is certainly to be encouraged. How about a GUI for GDB? Well that's getting closer to the line, perhaps it is past it, because then the GUI becomes a fundamental part of the debugger, whereas a GUI for GNAT is not a fundamental part of the compiler at least not usually. If all this makes people a bit nervous about what is and what is not allowed in attempts to use GPL'ed stuff as part of proprietary software, do not expect us or Richard Stallman to get too upset! If it encourages the production of more freely available software for the Ada community, that is a good thing. An example of this happening is the vendor who will be creating a new Ada 95 cross compiler using the GNAT front end and their own previously proprietary backend, which in its new incarnation will join the ranks of free software products. Two particular notes on all this with respect to GNAT. First, the ASIS interface has been specially designed so that it is suitable for generating third party products that need not be covered by the GPL. One of the functions we see for ASIS is providing this kind of insulation. Second, none of this discussion ever applies to programs *generated* by GNAT, since all units in question there are covered not by the GPL, but by the modified GPL that is specifically designed to allow such programs to be used without imposing GPL distribution requirements. It only applies to programs that actually want to use some of our copyrighted code directly. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-01 0:00 ` James Rogers 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 1 reply; 63+ messages in thread From: James Rogers @ 1997-07-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Just a slight detour from the current thread of this subject, when will gnat-3.10 be generally available to the public on for free? How about gnat-4.0? -- Jim Rogers ************************************************************* Team Ada ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 James Rogers @ 1997-07-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-07-02 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) James Rogers asks <<Just a slight detour from the current thread of this subject, when will gnat-3.10 be generally available to the public on for free? How about gnat-4.0? >> For GNAT 3.10, we never announce schedules for the public releases, and we have no definite plans for the 3.10 release. Development is continuing very rapidly, and basically we wait till there is a nice window of opportunity in terms of this development cycle till we make the public release. At this stahge, we will probably wait till the gdb support is complete, since this seems to be going very well. The designation 4.0x is reserved for the officially validated version. TO be using an officially validated version, you must have a contractual relationship with the holder of the validation certificate, or of courrse you could do the validation yourself. Thus 4.0 will only be available to supported customers. It is still free software, but transitive distribution does not make much sense in this formal case, since the recipient of a further distribution would NOT be using a formally validated compiler, according to DoD rules. If all you are interested in is getting a compiler that is technically equivalent to the validated compiler, then you have nothing to worry about. We will release public versions that are indeed equivalent to the validated versions, and which, for the targets for which we are validated (13 of them at this stage), will pass all the validation tests. Indeed we hope that version 3.10 will meet this goal (we run the entire ACVC suite every night on several different machines). Robert B.K. Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 [not found] ` <m2vi3kpuay.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net> 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar @ 1997-06-12 0:00 ` Stephen Leake 1997-06-14 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Jerry van Dijk 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Stephen Leake @ 1997-06-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole, in a fit of frustration, posted a long script documenting his attempt to install and bootstrap gnat. I am one of the "other people" that have successfully retargeted GNAT, without bugging ACT for free help. Ronald; this does not belong in this news group. If you are a paying customer of ACT, use email with them. If you are not a paying customer, give up! They are generously making the binaries available, with minimal instructions on how to change them around. If you cannot do what you want with the material provided, then pay the support cost, and get the help you need. ACT is not in business to lose money, and the rest of us would like them to keep providing free binaries! -- - Stephe ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
* Re: gnat-3.10 [not found] ` <m2vi3kpuay.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net> 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Stephen Leake @ 1997-06-14 0:00 ` Jerry van Dijk 2 siblings, 0 replies; 63+ messages in thread From: Jerry van Dijk @ 1997-06-14 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <m2vi3kpuay.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net> ronald@ridgenet.net writes: >$ uname -a >HP-UX pitbull B.10.10 A 9000/735 >$ ftp cs.nyu.edu >Connected to cs.nyu.edu. etc, etc, Couldn't this be sent through email ? Some of us have to pay for reading c.l.a. Jerry. -- -- Jerry van Dijk | Leiden, Holland -- Consultant | Team Ada -- Ordina Finance | jdijk@acm.org ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 63+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1997-07-11 0:00 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 63+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 1997-07-02 0:00 gnat-3.10 Peter Hermann 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below -- 1997-05-28 0:00 gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-05-29 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-05-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-07 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar [not found] ` <m2vi3kpuay.fsf@devo.ridgenet.net> 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-13 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-13 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Pontius 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Andrew Lynch 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Pontius 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner 1997-06-19 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Arthur Schwarz 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 CHARLET Arnaud 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-18 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Samuel Tardieu 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-20 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-22 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Larry Kilgallen 1997-06-27 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Larry Kilgallen 1997-06-28 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-29 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 David Kastrup 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-07-03 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Joerg Rodemann 1997-07-03 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Daniel R Risacher 1997-07-04 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 David Kastrup 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Fergus Henderson 1997-06-30 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Philip Brashear 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 James Rogers 1997-07-03 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-07-08 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-07-10 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-07-11 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner 1997-06-23 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Corey Minyard 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Pascal Obry 1997-06-16 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Joerg Rodemann 1997-06-17 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Ronald Cole 1997-06-24 0:00 ` what DOES the GPL really say? Spam Hater 1997-06-25 0:00 ` Richard Kenner 1997-06-25 0:00 ` Wes Groleau 1997-06-25 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Dale Stanbrough 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Richard Kenner 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-07-01 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 James Rogers 1997-07-02 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Robert Dewar 1997-06-12 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Stephen Leake 1997-06-14 0:00 ` gnat-3.10 Jerry van Dijk
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