Re: Ada in Debian: most libraries will switch to the pure GPL in Etch

[M E Leypold <development-2006-8ecbb5cc8aREMOVETHIS@ANDTHATm-e-leypold.de>]

Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:

> Michael Bode <m.g.bode@web.de> writes:
> > How can any AdaCore software then remain in Debian at all? How is any
> > Debian user supposed to know any AdaCore software is GPL if file
> > headers are invalid? How do *you* know? You have nothing written and
> > signed and the authors deny any validity of anything written in the
> > software itself.
> 
> This is becoming metaphysical.  Cogito, ergo sum, and all that :) Your
> argument applies to all software that is not at least
> cryptographically signed by their author, and accompanied by a signed
> license statement :) (note: software distributed by Debian _is_
> cryptographically signed, but that from upstream is not.
> 
> AdaCore make no claim as to the license terms for software I download
> from other sites than AdaCore.  And I don't think they can

Which leaves ypu with the fact that you don't know anything about
that, since the licensing terms in the GtkAda source tarball are far
from clearly stated.

> retroactively revoke the licenses that Debian received when I
> initially downloaded the software from NYU, AdaCore, or other places.

One would think. I think Michael has just overstating the problem
behind all that, but you see it too, don't you? I'd go as far as
saying, that ACT did purposefully muddy the water, since it is hardly
believable, that they don't know what and how they distributed from
libre.act-europe.fr. A statement of "it now like this, everthing up to
version x has been GMPL and/or everything you got from
libre.act-europe.fr or before $DATE is GMGPL" would not have cost them
much. But they didn't.

> But IANAL.

IANAL2.

Regards -- Markus