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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3e26dfa741e64e5f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.scarlet.biz!news.scarlet.biz.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 08:13:56 -0500 From: Ludovic Brenta Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available References: <432919be$0$10539$4d4eb98e@read.news.fr.uu.net> <1126773856.876636.265130@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 15:13:30 +0200 Message-ID: <87ek7m34ed.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.110004 (No Gnus v0.4) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:Qb2xra76dNI8Wh2UfilnpGmyIJo= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Host: 83.134.243.156 X-Trace: sv3-AfwVNp6gIPlcsBE2MkwCaEP7eHY3odjPQpXKi7Jeb5NL1qeRU7Be4FLpnoZ1/uYxTfoHD6Fqzdaqbkl!qzGfpQ9NLZTqFcy7dc2B+p4EeuCACjbPZ+5hmIDlXsA5zww3E/hXNowfaW+uSnHoVE4AQlLXlxI= X-Complaints-To: abuse@scarlet.be X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@scarlet.biz X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.32 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4859 Date: 2005-09-18T15:13:30+02:00 List-Id: "Ludovic Brenta" writes: > Please cast a vote on this forum. This is the time to influence the > next version of Debian. Here is another (and extensive) contribution from an anonymous contributor, posted on their behalf. Here goes: >From the reactions in the comp.lang.ada forum it is clear that the positive news about the much anticipated "official" public GNAT distribution is completely drowned by the strong negative feelings triggered by the limitation that it can only be used to develop GPL software. AdaCore obviously is fully entitled to distribute the GNAT GPL 2005 Edition as they did, but this license change is unfortunate for the promotion of Ada. GNAT has been and still is one of the most important tools for Ada advocacy, and Ada 2005 offers many opportunities to get new people interested. Although I am a strong supporter of open source software, I am an even stronger supporter of Ada and would like to see its usage increase. It is a fact that the Ada community is in much more need for support and advocacy than the open source community is. A freely available Ada toolset, without limitation on how the produced executables can be distributed, is hugely more important for Ada's progress than a GPL enforcing Ada toolset might be for the open source community. The former can attract new developers and one-man-shops to Ada, help them build new products, and increase the "market share" of Ada. The latter will most probably have a negligible effect on the strength of the open source movement, while it might chase away many who are genuinely interested in Ada, because they have other alternatives where this GPL "contamination" is not an issue (GNU C++ for example). Therefore, I feel it is very important that on a platform such as Debian a free "no strings attached" Ada development environment stays available. Ideally, this should be a recent GNAT release (both for bug fixes and Ada 2005 features), close to the "normal" Debian GCC distribution, and with an as complete toolset as possible (ASIS, GLADE, etc.). Developers of GPL software would then still have the option of using the GNAT GPL 2005 Edition directly from libre.adacore.com, should they so desire. Hence, my vote is: Voter gnat-gpl gnat-3.4 gnat-4.0 gnat-3.4+patches WAIT ------------------------------------------------------------------- Anonymous #3 -1 2 -- Ludovic Brenta, on behalf of an anonymous poster.