Re: Gnoga the "Killer App" for Ada

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

David Botton <david@botton.com> writes:

>  
>> Or FSF GCC, for that matter. This example is from GCC 4.9.0 gnat.ads:
>
> That looks identical but instead of "this library" spells out name.

This is true of the first para.

The second and fourth paras are identical.

The third para of the GNAT Pro version is

-- In particular,  you can freely  distribute your programs  built with the --
-- GNAT Pro compiler, including any required library run-time units,  using --
-- any licensing terms  of your choosing.  See the AdaCore Software License --
-- for full details.                                                        --

whereas the third para of the FSF version is

-- You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License and    --
-- a copy of the GCC Runtime Library Exception along with this program;     --
-- see the files COPYING3 and COPYING.RUNTIME respectively.  If not, see    --
-- <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.                                          --

The GNAT Pro version is more explicit; the FSF language is the same as
that used in other FSF GCC libraries (and I suspect that AdaCore were
strongly encouraged to use it when the change to GPLv3 occurred).

Even the GNAT Pro language isn't that good. It seems to promise that
using the GNAT Pro compiler entitles you to ignore the licensing terms
of any library you choose to include in your proprietary code! I quite
like the idea of merging the GNAT Pro language of the third para above
with the GMGPL language in the fourth para of your Gnoga; that would,
for example, cover the situation for people who build Gnoga with GNAT
GPL.

Of course IANAL.


Robert Dewar used to claim (at the time when AdaCore were making their
public releses pure GPL but hadn't completely updated the source of
libraries like ASIS) that the copyright statements in source files were
irrelevant and overridden by the overall copyright statement in the
distribution. I think this claim may not have been accurate (otherwise
why would FSF require copyright statements in each file?)