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 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,9a5f3bd162009c01 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!atl-c08.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!pc02.usenetserver.com!ALLTEL.NET-a2kHrUvQQWlmc!not-for-mail Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 08:35:04 -0500 From: "Marc A. Criley" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GNAT GPL 2005: Too clever by half? References: <70e0e$4331acfc$4995583$14979@ALLTEL.NET> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: X-Complaints-To: abuse@usenetserver.com Organization: UseNetServer.com X-Trace: d7a574332b2e3a13cf53509572 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5030 Date: 2005-09-22T08:35:04-05:00 List-Id: Brian May wrote: >>>>>>"Marc" == Marc A Criley writes: > > > Marc> If you're hard over to free software, GPL GNAT 2005 is just > Marc> fine and dandy, since it'll force people to make their > Marc> software free (libre), which is the goal of the FSF. > > The problem, as Samuel Tardieu has already mentioned, is that not all > "free software" uses the GPL. > > There are heaps of other licenses out there, from Apache license, > openssl license, BSD license, libstdc++ license, LGPL, just to mention > the first ones that come to the top of my head. > > It is simply not possible to convert all of these projects to use the > GPL (or GPL compatible[1]) licenses, no matter how much Richard > Stallman would like this. But this isn't a problem for a developer that is an adherent of the free (libre) software development philosophy of Stallman, et.al. If you want to use that developer's GPLed software, you have to have a compatible license. If you can't or won't employ such a license, then it's your loss, you can't use the software. Conversely, if the developer would like to freely exploit GPL software, but doesn't buy into FOSS theology, by actually making their code GPL they seriously limit what developers using non-GPL compatible licenses can do with it. Almost like proprietary software. I'm not passing judgement on these approaches to the use or misuse of the GPL, I'm just finding that there may be different utilizations of it that arise from a developer's motivation. -- Marc A. Criley -- McKae Technologies -- www.mckae.com -- DTraq - XPath In Ada - XML EZ Out