Re: Win32Ada

[dewar@gnat.com]

In article <364BE12F.F38A285C@cts.com>,
  dpw@cts.com wrote:
> If I understand the history correctly, Intermetrics made
> the bindings through direct government funding, so how
> did we get into a situation where taxpayers paid for
> this, as they did GNAT, and yet have to get Bill's
> permission to use it?  There must be some interesting
> story there somewhere.


Direct government funding does not guarantee data rights
to the public or the government. Indeed even in the case
of GNAT, which was only partially funded by the government,
there is absolutely nothing to stop ACT from deciding not
to distribute further versions, or to distribute further
versions with some proprietary components. Nothing that is,
except ACT's commitment to free software. The contract with
the government, long ago terminated, has nothing to say at
this point.

The original contract did however specify that GNAT be
released under the GPL, to ensure that at least the
versions that the government did help to fund would be
available. Apparently, in what I consider to be a serious
mistake, the government did not make the same requirement
for the Win32 bindings. It would of course have been
possible to generate clean room bindings free of Microsoft
control.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

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