Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <3BC196CF.ACEA8F64@brighton.ac.uk>, John English says...
>
>Does this apply to binaries? Certainly Perl, Python and Tcl are "open source"
>in some form (Perl is Perl Artistic License, Tcl is (c) Regents of University
>
>Not being a lawyer, I don't know if the GPL would prevent such conditions
>being imposed on a precompiled binary made from GPL source, or whether
>the vendor is merely obliged to point you at the sources and say "here
>you are, you can compile it yourself if you want to, but you can't give
>away copies of *our* compiled binaries".

The GPL does indeed prevent such restrictions. You don't really have to be a
laywer to get a pretty good understanding of it. A programmer that can look at
source code and understand what it is doing should be capable of looking at a
page of rules written in their own language and understand what they mean. The
GPL is quite short, and is available here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

Probably the most relevant passage is:
---
3.  You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under
Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2
above provided that you also do one of the following:

* a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code,
which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,

* b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give
any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing
source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding
source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a
medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

* c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to
distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for
noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code
or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
----


The only real danger here is that the copyright holder could always decide to
provide a release under a different license. However, the FSF is the copyright
holder for Gnat, and I doubt they will ever do that. :-)

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

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