From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,344332f209947007
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: dewar@gnat.com
Subject: Re: Gnat Free ?
Date: 1998/10/16
Message-ID: <708lc8$4ud$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 401951698
References: <6volj0$250$1@uuneo.neosoft.com> <3620F843.39465221@home.com>
 <3621E42C.2920@Entenhausen.net> <700rfc$6h4$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
 <3627196D.720A@Entenhausen.net> <708040$4h4$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x13.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
X-Article-Creation-Date: Fri Oct 16 23:37:43 1998 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/2.02 (OS/2; I)
Date: 1998-10-16T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <708040$4h4$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
  dennison@telepath.com wrote:
> In article <3627196D.720A@Entenhausen.net>,
>   Donald.Duck@Entenhausen.net wrote:
> > I have one question to GNAT. Is it still free of charge ? The last
> > version I had was 3.07 (from cs.nyu.edu), but I heard that GNAT is not
> > longer available free, ...
>
> You heard wrong. Well, I suppose it could be considered not free, depending
> on your definition of free, but lets not get into that. Gnat is under the
> GPL, and thus can *never* be made proprietary.

That might be a bit misleading. The original poster was not asking whether
GNAT is proprietary, but whether it was available free of charge.

The GPL has nothing at all to do with the
amount that is charged for software (you can have non-GPL'ed software that
costs nothing, and GPL'ed software that has non-zero cost). The GPL has to
do with redistribution rights, and rights to get hold of the sources.

That's an important distinction, because we often encounter people who think
that the GPL requires us to make public releases of GNAT. This is not at all
the case. Ada Core Technologies is certainly not required to make public
releases. We choose to do so periodically, updating the public version to
the latest and greatest GNAT technology, because we feel it is helpful for
the Ada community to have a version that is accessible for downloading at
no charge, particularly for the academic community.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/       Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own