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: 103376,f6ad09be517b338c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: LGPL Requirements (was: Selecting Ada95 compiler for MSDOS realtime application) Date: 1996/11/08 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 195418231 references: <55rs5t$2a3@nw101.infi.net> <55ufo9$2ar@nw101.infi.net> organization: New York University newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-11-08T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Thank you and others who have corrected my misunderstanding of GNAT's license. I had assumed that since the file "copying.lib" is distributed with GNAT, it's requirements must apply to GNAT's libraries. I did not think to look at the file headers because I wasn't aware that "special exceptions" to the GPL were permitted. Again, a huge misunderstanding of the GPL. Anyone holding a copyright can license things however they please. For instance, someone could use a license that allowed anyone but Microsoft to use a product free. The GPL is simply a starting point that you can use or not as you please, and modify anyway you like. Now the FSF is interested in free availability, so for software copyrighted by the FSF, it is unlikely that you would see peculiar restrictive versions of the GPL. The idea of the special exceptions is to extend the utility rather than to restrict it. I work for a large corporation which currently discourages the use of GNU software. The company lawyers have read the GPL and LGPL and are nervous that we might unknowingly incorporate GPL'd software into a product and then have customers requesting "our" software under the terms of the GPL. Well you can't blame the lawyers if you give them the wrong information. They are right to worry about incorporating GPL'ed software and also, if you don't want to distribute object files, you should also avoid including anything that is copyrighted under the LGPL. In general, you have to be very careful about incorporating components into your software whose copyrights are held by others. This applies equally to any copyrighted software. For example, if you use a TSP compiler, then you are incorporating TSP copyrighted code into your application, and you should have your lawyers make sure that this does not cause you problems (I assume it does not, like ACT, TSP is interested in avoiding such problems). In the case of GNAT, you should also check carefully to make sure that the copyrighted units you include do not cause you trouble, but please give the right copyright statement to your lawyers, and not some entirely irrelevant stuff! I am trying to get this no-GNU policy changed. I need to understand how GNAT's GPL license may or may not differ from that of plain gcc or g77. While I now understand that GNAT may be used to produce propriatary,for-profit executables, the last sentence of the special exception warns me to do so very carefully. No, you are not a lawyer probably, so you overreact to the last sentence. All this says is that you can't go including units covered by the normal GPL, and say "Hey, that's OK, I've got a unit here from GNAT that says everything is OK". I have occasionally run into cases where lawyers do not understand the issues clearly, and indeed many people are confused and read all sorts of things into the GPL that are not there (for example, the adahome page says that GPL'ed software cannot be sold -- which is of course nonsense). However, in this case, it seems that your lawyers were giving you correct information about something that does not in fact apply to you. Note that the runtime code for other GNU compilers (e.g. g++) is also distributed under specialized versions of the GPL designed to eliminate problems with incorporation of runtime library code. The statement for GNAT is a specialized one, that specifically addresses the concern about generic instantiation. We are currently preparing a Web page that will attempt to clarify these issues in further detail. Meanwhile, a useful example to think about is NextStep. At this stage, the only property that this company has is its proprietary operating system software. This is entirely written using GCC. There are many other such examples. I also note that we have run into a number of situations where sales people from other Ada vendors have, shall we say, rather peculiar notions about GNU software and the GPL, and work hard to pass these peculiar notions on to their customers :-)