Re: "proprietary", was Re: ada on linux

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <393B554F.43C369C4@research.canon.com.au>,
  Geoff Bull <geoff@research.canon.com.au> wrote:
> tmoran@bix.com wrote:
> > While legal, adding significant value to one's
> > proprietary product by copying/including something BSDed,
without its
> > author's permission, is usually considered unethical.
>
> On what do you base this assertion ???
> There is absolutely nothing to suggest this in the BSD
> license.

Exactly, and indeed one of the main reasons that some authors
prefer to use the BSD is precisely that they want everyone to
be free to use the software without any restrictions. That's
perfectly legitimate, and may indeed make a lot of sense in
a particular situation. For example, when you buy the Palm
Developer's Kit, you get a completely unfettered license to
the source of the Palm utilities. Palm *wants* you to make
improved software to sell more Palms!

The choice of license really depends on the situation.

For the GNAT runtime, we think it is a good thing if developers
can freely use this code, and that is why we follow the pattern
established by the FSF in similar situations to ensure that
runtime code can be freely used.

For the GNAT compiler, we think it is a good thing for the Ada
community if we all have a guarantee that all future versions
of GNAT will remain in open source/free software status, and
that's why we choose to use the GPL for this part of the
technology.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies



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