Re: GNAT runtime licensing mess

[Waldek Hebisch <hebisch@math.uni.wroc.pl>]

Patrick Noffke <patrick.noffke@gmail.com> wrote:
> I noticed many source files in the GNAT-GPL runtime (gnat-gpl-2014-47
> for ARM-ELF) differ only from the FSF version (specifically
> libgnat-devel-4.9.2-6.fc21.x86_64 on Fedora 21) by omitting this clause
> in the comment header of the GNAT-GPL version of the file:
> 
> -- As a special exception under Section 7 of GPL version 3, you are granted --
> -- additional permissions described in the GCC Runtime Library Exception,   --
> -- version 3.1, as published by the Free Software Foundation.               --
> 
> This got me thinking -- who are AdaCore to choose whether or not to include this clause?  
<snip>
> At some point "the GCC developers" (whatever that means) decided/agreed
> to include the FSF's runtime library exception into GCC.  How they
> pulled that off seems like magic -- how do they know they got every
> author to agree to that exception?

As Florian wrote anybody can drop exception.  FSF insists that
copyright of any code included in GCC is transfered to FSF.  As
a copyright owner thay can add extra permissions.

-- 
                              Waldek Hebisch
hebisch@math.uni.wroc.pl