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-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c9ea66d3dcd0bfcf X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-05-06 06:50:40 PST Path: newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!193.251.151.101!opentransit.net!proxad.net!feeder2-1.proxad.net!nnrp4.proxad.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Sender: briot@berlin.int.act-europe.fr Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] XML/Ada 0.5 released References: From: Emmanuel Briot Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Date: Sun, 06 May 2001 13:50:39 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 213.228.58.169 X-Complaints-To: abuse@proxad.net X-Trace: nnrp4.proxad.net 989157039 213.228.58.169 (Sun, 06 May 2001 15:50:39 CEST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 06 May 2001 15:50:39 CEST Organization: Guest of ProXad - France Xref: newsfeed.google.com comp.lang.ada:7234 Date: 2001-05-06T13:50:39+00:00 List-Id: [Posted on behalf of Robert Dewar] First, a general note, the direct posts you saw from me in this thread are not posts at all, but the results of some very strange cc mechanism in what were intended to be personal replies to David Botton. I apologize for these, they were definitely worded as private mail to Dave, and not for general consumption (in particular I certainly would not have posted the comment about RR, and I want to make it clear that I appreciate RR's efforts in the Ada area, indeed they are a technical partner of ours, and we point customers in their direction, but we certainly do not regard them as a competitive force, quite the contrary, we regard them as partners). None of these posts should be regarded as official comments from ACT, they are simply off hand comments to David. I will refrain from answering any of David's email in the future to prevent this strange occurrence. It never occured to me that a cc could be used in this way to create a direct post that looks like it was deliberately posted as an article. > I am glad to see you back, Mr Dewar, I hope it's not just a temporary > thing. As I explained, any posts that appear directly from me are entirely accidental, and most certainly that phenomenon is temporary. I do not intend to post my personal email here, and once again, apologize for doing so (email is a tricky area, with all sorts of traps like this :-) I do watch some threads, and will post indirectly from time to time when it is appropriate to do so. ----------------------------------------- Second, a couple of specific comments (these ARE intended as posts). In general from now on, only posts coming indirectly from someone else at ACT are intentional posts :-) Florian said > But what will you do if someone contributes code under the GPL? Or > won't you accept such contributions? (Maybe that's a highly > theoretical issue at this point, but you never know...) I must say I am completely puzzled by this comment. All the code in question IS under the GPL, so certainly people can contribute GPL'ed code. You have to explain what on earth you mean here :-) Furthermore people have contributed a lot of GPL'ed code in the past, as well as GMGPL'ed code where appropriate, so there is nothing theoretical about such a possibility. Ted said > Since a copy was cc-ed to me, I too was wondering where it was. I'm glad to see > it finally appear, as it has some good info in it (despite the personal > attacks). Please do not regard it as a personal attack if I correct plain inaccurate information, and if I suggest more careful checking up on information. It really doesn't help if incorrect stuff is posted. if you are relying on your memory, check first :-) > Now perhaps you can see why I got so defensive all of a sudden. I'll leave it up > to everyone else's judgement whether what I said was reasonably close to the > truth, based on the old messages I referenced. What started that thread that > contained the RMS suggestion to use a modified GPL is unfortunately lost to the > mists of time, but my memory of it was that someone piped up about their lawyers > refusing to allow use of GNAT due to the GPL/LGPL issue. No, nothing is lost in this mists of time, and the facts are quite clear, despite Ted's memory to the contrary. Here are the historical facts (if you like, go back and check the document trail, you will find this all documented). 1. The original GNAT contract required all software to be released under the GPL or LGPL and the copyright assigned to the FSF. The idea was to release the runtime under the LGPL. This was a direct response to my suggestion of what the contract should say. 2. On examination, we became concerned that the LGPL was not the right vehicle because of two factors a) the annoyance of distributing objects b) the issue of generics So I created the GMGPL very early on, and we used it from the very beginning for all GNAT sources (neither the GPL nor the LGPL was ever used for any GNAT runtime sources). We then discussed with Stallman to ask if he had any objection to the change. He was confused at first, and thought we were suggesting using the *GPL* for the runtime library, and he encouraged us to look to the C model and use a modified non-restrictive version of the GPL, but that was what we were already doing in any case. So once again, no, there was no one who "piped up about their lawyer refusing to allow use of GNAT" that had any influence on this decision which was made long before any lawyer had a chance to pipe up :-) Sure, there were lawyers who piped up, and we went through many occasions on which we had to demonstrate to lawyers that our GMGPL license for the runtime meant that they could use the system without concerns. Now days, we provide a formal license agreement to our customers that clarifies all issues. In the case of non-customers, there really is no clear legal license agreement, and indeed it is a bit unclear in court what the status would be for users of the public version (in other words, courts would have to decide whether the fact that you had published a statement that something was distributed under the GPL constituted receiving specific permission for copying, we hope it would, but we do not know till it is litigated). For customers, the situation is like dealing with any other company, indeed it is like dealing with Microsoft, except our license is a bit more liberal than theirs :-) (by the way, I comment on Microsoft's latest outburst that they have a lot of chutzpah to complain that they don't like the license we choose to give because it means they cannot abscond with *our* intellectual property :-) But back to piping up lawyers ... as I said in my previous message, we knew perfectly well that using the GPL for everything would have caused trouble (not the least of which is that it would have been non-responsive to the DoD contract which required the LGPL to be used for the runtime :-) Neither the decision to use the LGPL, nor the subsequent decision to replace it with the GMGPL had anything to do with external lawyers. Indeed at that time, we knew more about how GPL licensing works than virtually all IPR lawyers (now of course Microsoft, Redhat, WRS, IBM etc have large armies of lawyers who have studied these licenses VERY carefully). (another side comment on Microsoft is that of course when they try to spread FUD about open source software in general, and the GPL in particular, what they are really trying to do is to stop people using the stuff. It must be very frustrating for Microsoft that not only is there important software that they don't own it, but they can't even buy it, no matter how much money they have :-)