Re: MinGW Ada compiler licence question targeting commercial applications

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

John B. Matthews wrote on comp.lang.ada:
>  Ludovic Brenta wrote:
>> John B. Matthews wrote on comp.lang.ada:
>>> I was puzzled by this, too:
>
>>> <http://lists.adacore.com/pipermail/gtkada/2009-June/thread.html>
>
>> You're not the only one; I've tried to explain things in the README
>> file of most Debian packages. Here is the text I wrote for
>> libgtkada2-dev at the time of the license change in 2005:
>
> Thank you for clarifying this, Ludovic. I had been using GtkAda 2.4.2
> for several years and only recently had the opportunity to update. I
> see I overlooked a pivotal announcement in 2005:
>
> <http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ada/browse_frm/thread/3e26dfa74
> 1e64e5f>
>
> Is there some heuristic for determining when the GMGPL ceased to apply:
> a date or version number, perhaps?

The last version under GMGPL was 2.4.  At that time, AdaCore's source
repository was private.  They made a branch of their Subversion
repository public on 2007-06-07, long after the license change.

> [http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/libg/libgtkada2/libgtkad
> a2_2.8.1-5/libgtkada-glade-2.8.copyright]

Right. If you look at the Package Tracking System[1], you'll see the
history of uploads to Debian.  The license change took place there
when I uploaded libgtkada2 2.8.1-1 to unstable on 2006-09-25.  Debian
4.0 "Etch" shipped with 2.8.1-5 and the license change as I announced
here on 2006-06-27[2] (the ensuing thread is interesting read, too).
IIRC, since the source repository was still private at the time, I
downloaded a tarball from libre.adacore.com.

[1] http://packages.qa.debian.org/libg/libgtkada2.html
[2] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ada/msg/19c1a7e66b6f6b73

--
Ludovic Brenta.