Re: GNAT GPL 2005: Too clever by half?

[Samuel Tardieu <sam@rfc1149.net>]

>>>>> "Marc" == Marc A Criley <mcNOSPAM@mckae.com> writes:

Marc> DTraq has been licensed under the GMGPL, as has most other GNAT
Marc> aided software developed by Ada enthusiasts.  If I were to use
Marc> the new GNAT GPL 2005, I would pretty much be driven to changing
Marc> that to the full GPL.

Marc> And then it struck me.

Marc> So what?

So I hope DTraq doesn't use OpenSSL for example. Linking and
distributing GMGPL code with OpenSSL is fine, linking GPL code with
OpenSSL is not. You would not be able to provide your customers with a
binary, they would have to do the link on site.

Sure, you could add an exception in DTraq code so that linking with
OpenSSL is excluded from the GPL requirements, as has been done with
OpenVPN (http://tinyurl.com/97xcq). However, you cannot add this
exception to the GNAT runtime (you're not the copyright owner and the
GPL doesn't allow you to do so). So you're still stuck if you use the
GNAT GPL 2005 compiler, while you're ok if you use a GMGPL runtime.

And this is only one example...

So what?

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