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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f7344,3307180c36b2ddde X-Google-Attributes: gidf7344,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,818bb9686cf8adae X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Dec Ditching Ada? Date: 1996/09/07 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 179149069 references: <1996Sep5.092514.1@eisner> <1996Sep6.091045.1@eisner> <50qkqh$f1o@news.nyu.edu> <3231CA5D.67B1@iag.net> organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.os.vms Date: 1996-09-07T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Ted said ""That's a good argument for calling ACT commercial. GNAT itself, not being owned by anyone and being freely available, would not seem to fit the definition."" There is another VERY wrong piece of misinformation there. GNAT definitely IS owned by someone. The copyright is held by the Free Software Foundatoin. The copyright notice appears on every source file, and the binary will display this notice if you use the -gnatv switch: "GNAT 3.08w (960827) Copyright 1991-1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc." Just as Microsoft grants a limited use license for use of its copyrighted products, the FSF also grants a limited use license for the use of *its* copyrighted products. The terms of the license are indeed different, and of course Microsoft will only grant you their much more limited license if you cough up money up front, but the ownership situation is identical in both cases. GNAT is very definitely NOT in the public domain!