Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available

[Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com>]

Dr. Adrian Wrigley wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 13:01:30 +0000, Dr. Adrian Wrigley wrote:
> 
> 
>>The versions of GLADE and GtkAda I use are GMGPL.
>>GLADE is (C) 1996-2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc
>>GtkAda is (C) 1998-1999 Briot, Brobecker and Charlet 
> 
> 
> Oh ****!   I've just noticed that the COPYING file in GtkAda
> was switched to GPL from LGPL *years* ago, although the
> individual source files weren't.
> 
> I had been looking at the copyright notices in the
> individual files (GMGPL).  But it looks like the
> intention since 1999 was that GtkAda and GLADE is
> not covered GMGPL/LGPL :(  (was this discussed
> here a while back?)
> 
> One would hope that publicly available Ada bindings and
> corresponding publicly available libraries would use the
> license...
> 
> Can we supply other people with our (closed) source code
> for Gtk applications for them to compile and link with
> GtkAda?  The source code is not a derived work of GtkAda,
> and the recipient is not distributing it, so there is
> no breach of the GPL on the binding.

Again no one on these groups is qualified to answer....but I will give 
my unqualified response.

It is not a bad thing that Glade and GtkAda are GPL + Exception instead 
of LGPL. LGPL would be bad for most Ada libraries. If you want to 
distribute binaries only it is very very difficult with Ada Generics or 
C++ templates to meet the requirements of section 6 of the LGPL..Thus 
the GPL+Exception gives you (the developer) more leeway.


Note you could even give other people the binary only for your program 
(just give them source for GtkAda and Gtk) with the exception clause.