Re: Ada-WinRT bindings - Alpha release

["Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Saturday, April 14, 2018 at 2:13:37 AM UTC-5, Simon Wright wrote:
> Alex writes:
> 
> > I am happy to change the licensing of the bindings to LGPL and will do
> > so over the weekend.
> 
> There are clearly different arguments to be made here, but since GCC has
> deprecated the LGPL and instead allowed people who want to build
> proprietary software using GCC (and, therefore, the necessary included
> runtimes) by applying the GCC Runtime Library Exception[1] to their
> libraries[2], I follow their example [3].
> 
> [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception
> [2] https://github.com/gcc-mirror/gcc/blob/master/libgcc/dfp-bit.c#L16
> [3] https://github.com/simonjwright/cortex-gnat-rts/blob/master/common/environment_task.adb#L11

Simon, for a library implementation (e.g., GCC's C and C++ standard libraries) that somehow is limited to only GCC, not portable to (or intended for) other compilers and linkers and toolchains, then perhaps that is a valid line of reasoning.  But in this case, Alex's Ada-WinRT should be able to utilized nonvirally with any non-GNAT Ada compiler that happens to support a Microsoft build environment.  Every conceivable non-GNAT Ada compiler now extant or forthcoming in the future could easily trigger the Eligible Compilation Process clause:

“A Compilation Process is "Eligible" if it is done using GCC, alone or with other GPL-compatible software, or if it is done without using any work based on GCC.”

Ada-WinRT is intended for WinRT DLLs, called components, which bring the vast majority of .NET's framework to processor-native machine-code languages.  Microsoft is increasingly dependent on Mono to spread .NET to iOS and to Android (and presumably Fuscia and perhaps Tizen in the future).  It is easily conceivable for Ada-WinRT to be applicable to this expanding Mono-based footprint on non-Microsoft operating systems, as bindings are generated for Mono and/or for Cocoa Touch's presentation in Mono and/or Android SDK's presentation in Mono.  Conversely, Mono could conceivably now or in the future trivially utilize some portion of GCC somewhere in its build process of something—anything on which Ada-WinRT is downstream, even indirectly.  This could trigger the “any work based on GCC” clause in the Eligible Compilation Process, which would then revert Ada-WinRT's GPL-with-Runtime-Exception license to full-fledged GPL.  This sneak-in-the-backdoor sequence of events years from now is specifically the kind of viralness that is feared from the GPL, including the GPL-with-Runtime-Exceptions.

LGPL does not have that potential vector of viral-ness at all.  LGPL is safe for app developers.  LGPL forces anyone modifying Alex's Ada-WinRT work to contribute those modifications publicly so that they get back to Alex.  Win-win.  If FSF is all about freedom, then Alex is completely free and unfettered to choose whichever license he thinks best, considering all these ramifications.