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From: Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Precisely why can't official FSF GNAT maintainers copy bug fixes
 in GNAT & its GCC-contained runtime en masse from GNAT GPL Community Edition?
Date: Thu, 03 May 2018 14:17:25 -0700
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Date: 2018-05-03T14:17:25-07:00
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"Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net> writes:
> Precisely why can't official FSF GNAT maintainers copy bug fixes ••and
> brand new features•• in GNAT & its GCC-contained runtime en masse from
> GNAT GPL Community Edition?

I thought the licenses were incompatible.  The FSF runtime has the GPL
runtime exception and the GNAT runtime does not.  Speaking just for
myself, I'd expect the FSF to not accept such a feature if it was aware
of the issue with its licensing.

You also asked what would happen if the FSF accepted the feature without
being aware of the issue, then found out about it later.  That doesn't
seem different than if someone contributed code that they weren't
entitled to contribute (e.g. they wrote it at work, and didn't get the
contribution cleared by their employer).  Again IANAL but ISTM that once
the FSF found out, they'd have to say "oops, despite our efforts to
check out the license of the contribution before we accepted it, it
somehow got past us so we have to withdraw the code since it's not
really ours to release under those terms."  That doesn't sound
conceptually different to me than when someone uploads an unlicensed
song to Youtube and then Youtube has to take it down.

I'd also add that again I'm speaking just for myself, but ISTM that the
FSF is a pro-GPL organization whose goal is for all of the world's
software to be GPL.  It sometimes uses non-GPL licensing such as the
LGPL and the library runtime exception for specific programs as tactical
maneuvers in pursuit of the larger goal, like in chess, where you might
sacrifice a pawn to get closer to checkmating the other player's king.
So I wouldn't expect it to go looking for ways to circumvent Adacore's
choice of the pure GPL.  It *likes* the GPL and is unlikely to see
GNAT's use of the pure GPL as being bad.

Anyway, when you go around trying to subvert someone else's licensing
choices like you seem to be proposing, you're also inviting the rest of
the world to subvert *your* licensing choices.  It's better to stay
clean, I would say.