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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Not redistributing GNAT Pro (was: GWindows and a home for it)
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From: Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta@insalien.org>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 21:11:08 +0200
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Date: 2004-10-07T21:14:46+02:00
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Stéphane Richard writes:
> Stephen Leake wrote:
>> You are incorrect. The GNAT Pro toolset is covered by the same
>> GMGPL license as the public version. There is an informal
>> understanding among supported customers that it is not appropriate
>> to distribute the Pro version to unsupported people, because it is
>> _not_ ready for unsupported use.

> By that do you mean that customers could customize GNAT Pro with
> whatever extensions and that's what they're not allowed to
> distribute or at least it's the reason why they're not allow to
> distribute GNAT pro themselves?  if so it makes sense.  I might not
> want to test a new thing some customer added to their gnat pro...;-)

Customers are allowed to make changes to GNAT Pro and distribute their
changes if they so choose, and they can even charge for that if they
want.  The GMGPL guarantees them those rights.

I am not a supported customer of Ada Core's, but I can imagine several
reasons why a customer would choose to respect Ada Core's request not
to distribute their changes:

- They are not compiler businesses.  They are busy writing mission- or
  life-critical software in Ada and have no time to devote to
  modifying GNAT.  In fact, that's what they pay Ada Core for.

- They do not want to make it public that they use Ada.

- They do not want to put their reputation at stake, should their
  modified GNAT Pro prove to be buggy.

- They do not want to fork away from GNAT Pro, because this would
  cause maintenance nightmares.  And Ada software engineers know how
  much that costs.

There may be other reasons as well which I have not thought of.  Would
a supported customer care to enlighten us?

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.