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: 103376,35ce1c7836290812 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com Subject: Re: SGI GNAT Question? (Long) Date: 1999/03/07 Message-ID: <7buaj6$5al$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 452244325 References: <7bflkk$78i$1@news.ro.com> <7bhlb2$h4n$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <7bia5u$3lt$1@news.ro.com> <7bkasm$rlt$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36DE8585.2B5E6A5C@spam.com> <7bmbr5$j3p$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36DFA6FB.D3A2AD84@spam.com> <7bos1q$ogq$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <7bp6pv$2mm$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <7bpjoe$eia$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36E25778.C056829@chocolatesaltyballs.com> <36E294AB.86AFBA58@Botton.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x2.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 166.72.70.180 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Sun Mar 07 16:47:36 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-03-07T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <36E294AB.86AFBA58@Botton.com>, David Botton wrote: > I think Robert Dewar was referring to those parts of GNAT > which were written by ACT. There is no reason why he > could not withhold further development of these portions > or re-release those portions as separate packages not > under the GPL. Well not "he" (I don't hold the copyrights) but rather ACT. Of course as I have emphasized, ACT is a 100% open source committed company, and we fully intend to make all our current and future technology available under the GPL in open source form. Part of the reason I emphasize the legal situation here is that the open software community needs to understand that this kind of proprietarization is possible, and to keep a close watch on it, and yell loudly where appropriate! > As an illustration, the program PINE branched about a > year ago in to a GPL version and a non-GPL version. GNAT > as it is today can not be taken away, but that doesn't > mean that future work has to be made public or under the > GPL. This is precisely the sort of thing I am concerned about. Open source software at many companies is constantly under pressure from a more conventional (e.g. venture capital) point of view that the way to make money on free software is to make it proprietary. At ACT, we have no investors to keep happy. The only investment in ACT were from its participants (officers working for free for a while, some small loans from officers, and a few deferred paychecks early on, other than that we ran from revenue). At this stage, ACT has been on a firm financial footing for quite a while, with all its bills paid, the payroll met on time, and money in the bank. We are not getting Bill-Gates style rich, or even typical-broker-on-wall-street rich, but we are doing fine, and most importantly we are not beholden to investors with more interest in money than in Ada. We plan incidentally to release a financial report at the end of the calendar year. We don't have to do this, since we are a private company, but we think the Ada community will be pleased to know that a company with 100% Ada orientation can be financially viable. > Is copyleft a legal term? no, defintely not! > I thought it was slang for the copyrighted software that > used copyright law to keep information public instead of > private. I'll look it up. yes! that's right, and in my experience the term has caused quite a bit of confusion, so we never use it. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own