Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available

[Tapio Kelloniemi <invalid@localdomain.com>]

"Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote:
>Samuel Tardieu a =E9crit :
>By the same token, I don't think that current paying customers of
>AdaCore care.  I think that the only ones who are really hurt by
>AdaCore's decision are the SMEs and individuals who want to write
>commercial software in Ada, but don't have the money to pay for
>AdaCore's (or other companies') support contracts. 

Plus those who develop free software, but need to publish their work under
another license so that other free software can link against it. These
situations are, however, quite rare.

>> The real problem is not technical. It is still possible to build a
>> "clean" compiler which can be used on any kind of sources. The problem
>> is political. AdaCore's move causes a lot of confusion in the
>> community and may make companies unsure of what they can and can't do.
>
>I agree that there is confusion.  A lot of companies would like "free
>software" to be free for companies; it isn't.

And it must not be, and neither it must be free for any other closed-source
developers, who think that they can get money from something (or using
something) that others give for free.

>> I think it would have been much better if AdaCore had kept the GMGPL
>> version, or if they had not complicated everything by providing
>> GPL-only packages. The situation was simple (be an AdaCore customer or
>> get your compiler from another source such as a GNU/Linux distribution
>> or build it from FSF sources), it is now ugly (in some cases, you can
>> get a GNAT compiler which doesn't allow you to use a GPL-incompatible
>> license for your source code if you intend to redistribute the
>> result).
>
>Yes, I agree it is ugly to have multiple sources for the same software
>under different licenses.   I hope that once the vote is over (next
>Tuesday), the ugliness will be dealt with for good, at least as far as
>Debian is concerned.  BTW, Tapio Kelloniemi suggested providing both
>GNAT GPL 2005 Edition and GCC 4.0 in Debian.  I will not support two
>different GNATs in Debian, especially if they have different licenses.

I did not recommend supporting two editions, but rather including two
editions (one super-stable for free software development) and another
because it comes with the same GCC as the other system's compilers. Currently
Debian includes three(?) GNAT versions (3.15, 3.4 and 4.0). Including
GNAT-4.0 just because it does not have those special exceptions has no
sense. Free software is always better than non-free, and if GNAT-4.0 is
really buggy and no one has time to backport fixes and features from 4.1,
I recommend including the super-stable and complete GNAT GPL.

>> I still fail to understand this tactical move.
>
>Me too, but as I said, AdaCore is under no obligation to explain.  If
>they care to explain, I'm all ears, of course.

If I were AdaCore I had done the same (but long time ago), so that SMEs
and greedy individuals would not use something written by me to collect
money for themselves. All of my software is GPL to prevent someone from
using it in non-free projects. Free software is about giving without
losing, non-free software has very different goals and it should not be
built using free components, because non-free software developers don't
want to help their neighbours, as free software developers do.

>My message is that nobody has a right to *complain* about AdaCore's
>decision, or even demand an explanation; but people should decide for
>themselves what to do about it.  The vote is designed to do just that.

Many people have said that what AdaCore has done is not good for the image
of Ada. I ask, isn't that bad for Ada's image that although new Ada2005
features are available in GNAT GPL, they are not provided for Free
Software developers (in Debian or other distros). Generally people are
lazy (or unable) to install software themselves (even from third-party
provided binaries) and when searching for a language, they just choose C++
instead, since the most featureful (and stable) Ada compiler is not
available. Those who have voted against GNAT GPL seem not to be mostly
free software developers, but I think that Debian should consider
free software developers as the primary target of their distribution, since
its free.

-- 
Tapio