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,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.99.61.79 with SMTP id k76mr290572pga.3.1488742696569; Sun, 05 Mar 2017 11:38:16 -0800 (PST) X-Received: by 10.157.12.1 with SMTP id 1mr1014613otr.2.1488742696505; Sun, 05 Mar 2017 11:38:16 -0800 (PST) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!border1.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!border2.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!newsfeed8.news.xs4all.nl!newspeer1.nac.net!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!68no2013274itg.0!news-out.google.com!15ni5690itm.0!nntp.google.com!68no2013268itg.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2017 11:38:16 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=2601:191:8303:2100:8d6:d306:fca:fbb5; posting-account=fdRd8woAAADTIlxCu9FgvDrUK4wPzvy3 NNTP-Posting-Host: 2601:191:8303:2100:8d6:d306:fca:fbb5 References: <1813789782.509760763.093426.laguest-archeia.com@nntp.aioe.org> <87varxjouh.fsf@nightsong.com> <250466748.510009784.561340.laguest-archeia.com@nntp.aioe.org> <04f3a0f2-deb4-4b3e-a0bf-68d56bba7204@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Adacore and licensing (again), was: Re: State of the compiler market From: Robert Eachus Injection-Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2017 19:38:16 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Original-Bytes: 3695 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:33469 Date: 2017-03-05T11:38:16-08:00 List-Id: On Wednesday, March 1, 2017 at 1:36:40 PM UTC-5, Simon Clubley wrote: > On 2017-03-01, reinert wrote: > >>=20 > >> If you are using Adacore's free GNAT distribution instead of the FSF > >> distribution then your resulting product will have to be open source. > >>=20 > >> Are you aware of this ? > >>=20 > >> Simon. > >>=20 > > > > Yepp. And I assume potential users will hesitate to spend much time to = learn to use something closed source from a small business :-) >=20 > Good. Given that I have had to explain this to more than one person > over the years who simply hadn't realised this, I just wanted to be > sure you knew. >=20 > Simon. Don't scare people too much. Use whatever version of GNAT (or other compil= er) you want during development. When you get ready to ship a commercial p= roduct, the version you use to compile THAT is important, consult your lawy= er type stuff. If all you distribute to your customers is source code, non= e of that applies. When I was at MITRE, our group tried to keep code compiling through two dif= ferent compilers during development. Occasionally this turned out to be ha= ndy, if one compiler didn't work with a new OS release or there was a bug w= here we needed to wait for a compiler fix. It also let us find errors in th= e RM, and more interesting, thinkos, where it had to be that way in the sta= ndard, but it just seemed wrong. For example, what happens if there are se= veral ways to evaluate the expression in a static type declaration? For ex= ample: Big: constant :=3D 3**300 / 9**140 - 2**31; -- fits in a 32-bit integer= . But evaluating it sure doesn't. Most compilers now have built-in bignum pa= ckages now, but you know that the compiler is not going to evaluate that th= e way you would. Are there still cases where (some) compilers will reject = otherwise legal programs do to (compile-time) capacity limits? I'm sure th= ere are, but I'm also sure that they are very hard to reach.=20