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,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: a07f3367d7,c92999d3d36edb6c X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!r16g2000vbn.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: sjw Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: MinGW Ada compiler licence question targeting commercial applications Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:20:57 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.20.239.89 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1245352857 12564 127.0.0.1 (18 Jun 2009 19:20:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:20:57 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: r16g2000vbn.googlegroups.com; posting-host=82.20.239.89; posting-account=_RXWmAoAAADQS3ojtLFDmTNJCT0N2R4U User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/530.17,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:6514 Date: 2009-06-18T12:20:57-07:00 List-Id: On Jun 17, 8:37=A0pm, Hibou57 (Yannick Duch=EAne) wrote: > The Ada 2005 compiler, GNAT GPS licence states that this compiler > cannot be used for commercial applications (if I'm not wrong). The > MinGW compiler suite licence give access to create commercial > applications (if I'm still not wrong). > > But what about the Ada 2005 compiler which comes with MinGW ? It has > something to deal with GNAT, isn't it ? So can I use it to comile > commercial applications ? You can develop your product using whatever compiler you like and distribute source; then the licensing terms are entirely up to you. If you want to distribute binary without releasing source then things are somewhat different. If you use AdaCore's GNAT GPL compiler as obtained from libre.adacore.com to build your binary application then you must distribute it under GPL terms or not at all. This is because the process of compiling an Ada program that uses the Ada library involves "copying" the source of the library -- at least, I think you'd be hard put to it to explain to a court why instantiating a generic didn't involve copying. If you're a paying AdaCore customer, they provide the compiler with a license that allows you to develop proprietary software without releasing source. In that case, or if you use the GCC Ada compiler from the Free Software Foundation, you will find that the RTS source includes this extension: -- As a special exception, if other files instantiate generics from this -- -- unit, or you link this unit with other files to produce an executable, -- -- this unit does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be -- -- covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not -- -- however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be -- -- covered by the GNU Public License. -- I suspect that the MinGW compiler is an FSF compiler; you can tell by saying 'gnatls -v', it'll look either like GNATLS GPL 2009 (20090519) Copyright (C) 1997-2009, Free Software Foundation, Inc. or GNATLS 4.3.3 Copyright (C) 1997-2007, Free Software Foundation, Inc. and the second style is the FSF one. Interestingly, the GCC 4.3.3 compiler's includes this: /* As a special exception, if you include this header file into source files compiled by GCC, this header file does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License. */ I couldn't find any overall policy statement at gcc.gnu.org, but it seems that the FSF are addressing this question as part of the GPL3 changes: see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception.html and http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-3.1-faq.html .