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: 1999/03/10 Message-ID: <7c5vaq$m72$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 453379725 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> <7bu97u$49l$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36E43789.12AAED5C@chocolatesaltyballs.com> <7c2a66$h6g$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36E6361A.D651CAD7@spam.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x1.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: Wed Mar 10 14:24:37 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-03-10T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <36E6361A.D651CAD7@spam.com>, spamwithchipsplease@spam.com wrote: > Funny. I contacted GNU.org via email sometime ago and > they toldme that while ACT were perfectly entitled to > require you to part with a "support" fee for a copy of > their "commercial" version it was not in the spirit of > the GPL and anyone who obtained a copy was still free to > redistribute it. For the price of a CD for example. Well who knows how you described the situation. The fact is that Richard Stallman, with whom I talk frequently, knows exactly what we do and is perfectly comfortable with our way of doing business. Probably what caused the confusion when you sent mesages to gnu.org (note you did not quote your message that you sent them), was that you implied that the commercial version was significantly different from the public version, which it is not (the significantly here covers just two things: 1) the version number 2) the fact that the public version has no warranty, whereas the commercial version is warranteed. Note also that of course once the public version is out, we have no control over what happens to it then, and you can't be sure that what you have is exactly what we distributed (it might have bug fixes and be better, and then again, the fixes might be incorrect, since for one thing the regression tests that we use are not available publicly -- they cannot be because they are primarily proprietary customer code). > Well, depends what gets your goat as to what you find > outrageous.The basis I have for this claim are GPL > versions I cannot see without paying a fee well above > redistribution costs. Once again, there is absolutely NOTHING in the GPL that suggests that GPL software must be made available for the distribution costs. The fact that ACT does in fact make our software available, without even charging the distribution costs (which we assume), is nothing to do with the GPL. > Calling a GPL work "commerical" The idea that GPL'ed software is somehow inherently non-commercial is actually fundamentally at odds with the intention of the GNU project, which is very definitely intended to provide the possibility of viable commercial alternatives to proprietary software. Remember that commercial does not mean proprietary! > restricting its redistribution We do not restrict redistribution in any way. As you frequently point out, anyone who has the commercial version is free to distribute it. They do not do so probably because 1) Companies like Boeing (the license holder) are not in the business of redistributing licensed softare to others. 2) They understand that such distribution would not be particularly helpful to the Ada community. In particular, it is useful for people to understand But at no point do we in ANY WAY restrict redistribution. This is a claim your are making without substance. > and asking everyone to believe on trust ( however well > place) that theres no functional difference between > this and the "public" version is something I find > outrageous. I see no basis for this outrage. We freely choose to distribute the products of our labor under the GPL (that's our choice for much of the system that we have created at ACT, no one forces us to do that), and we fully adhere to requirements of the GPL (though actually no one forces us to do that either, for example if we did not distribute the sources of ACT copyrighted stuff, the GPL has nothing to say about it, ACT owns that software. The important thing to realize is that GPL is not some kind of guarantee that an author will always do the things you want them to do. No one can force the creator of copyrighted software to behave in a particular manner. You are quite right, ACT has a stated policy, which it has unwaveringly followed, to be fully committed to open source software. Unlike some other open source software companies, we have not waffled around on this issue, and trie to proprietarize some components of what we do. But that does not mean that ACT might not change its mind in the future. I am sure that what would happen if ACT did change its mind would be that some other organization would pick up where ACT left off. Maintaining and developing an Ada tool chain is not an inexpensive project, ACT invests of the order of millions of dollars a year in this task, but so far the open source model has worked well to support this activity, so it is hard to see why, from a purely commercial point of view, ACT would change its business practices since they are working well. Indeed, in this age where commercialization of open source software is becoming more and more accepted and known, we find that our business model is regarded as less and less peculiar! Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own