Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available

[Samuel Tardieu <sam@rfc1149.net>]

>>>>> "Ludovic" == Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:

Ludovic> I agree.  As I have stated before, I personally do not have
Ludovic> any objection to libgnat being GPL for non-customers.  There
Ludovic> seems to be quite strong feelings the opposite way, and even
Ludovic> some frustration.  These feelings and frustration do not have
Ludovic> to be.

Do you think that the DoD (the funder of the early GNAT versions)
intent was to restrict the use of GNAT to programs using the GPL
license and to AdaCore (which didn't exist) customers?

The real problem is not technical. It is still possible to build a
"clean" compiler which can be used on any kind of sources. The problem
is political. AdaCore's move causes a lot of confusion in the
community and may make companies unsure of what they can and can't do.

I think it would have been much better if AdaCore had kept the GMGPL
version, or if they had not complicated everything by providing
GPL-only packages. The situation was simple (be an AdaCore customer or
get your compiler from another source such as a GNU/Linux distribution
or build it from FSF sources), it is now ugly (in some cases, you can
get a GNAT compiler which doesn't allow you to use a GPL-incompatible
license for your source code if you intend to redistribute the
result).

I still fail to understand this tactical move.

  Sam
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam@rfc1149.net -- http://www.rfc1149.net/sam