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-Thread: 103376,d0f6c37e3c1b712a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newspeer1.nwr.nac.net!newsfeed.freenet.de!news-in.ntli.net!newsrout1-win.ntli.net!ntli.net!news.highwinds-media.com!newspeer1-win.ntli.net!newsfe3-gui.ntli.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail From: "Dr. Adrian Wrigley" Subject: Re: Ada in Debian: most libraries will switch to the pure GPL in Etch User-Agent: Pan/0.14.2 (This is not a psychotic episode. It's a cleansing moment of clarity.) Message-Id: Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: <1151405920.523542.137920@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com> <1151422118.772405.307200@j72g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <87ac7ypaaa.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 10:51:27 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.10.238.153 X-Trace: newsfe3-gui.ntli.net 1151491887 82.10.238.153 (Wed, 28 Jun 2006 11:51:27 BST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 11:51:27 BST Organization: NTL Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:5203 Date: 2006-06-28T10:51:27+00:00 List-Id: On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 23:18:37 +0200, Ludovic Brenta wrote: > A license is not the same as a contract. A contract has to have > measurable obligations for both parties; a license is only a grant of > rights to the licensee, possibly without compensation. No > compensation, no contract, either written or implied. After I sent my message, I found this article: http://www.advogato.org/article/606.html I have changed my position slightly. It doesn't seem clear to "the experts" whether GPL is perpetual or revocable or not :( And it doesn't seem clear whether it is a simple copyright licence, or is part of a contract :( But it is clear that significanty different interpretations would be placed on the GPL by different legal systems and different (US) states :( I do believe that there is "consideration" required of a (English) contract. GPL *obligates* the licensee to make available source code to everyone to whom a binary is distributed. And it *obligates* the licensee to license source modifications to the recipients of binaries, and *obligates* the licensee to grant the rights to pass the source to third parties. These obligations on the licensee can be extremely valuable to the licensor. But the lack of any obligation on the licensee to distribute in the first place may invalidate the contingent obligation. Perhaps the contract is formed when the licensee takes actions of possible benefit to the licensor (such as distribution, modification etc)? In the end, I don't know how important the contract question is, but it is unquestionable that damages are caused to parties who seem to have lost rights to distribute their Ada programs by the recent changes. The Free Software Definition from gnu.org says: "In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be irrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the software has the power to revoke the license, without your doing anything to give cause, the software is not free." It seems pretty clear from the general industry practice in software that GPL is not revocable. The Ada software in question does not meet this definition of Free Software if the GMGPL licences really have been revoked. The strange thing is that nobody seems to benefit from the changes and the consequent FUD :( -- Dr. Adrian Wrigley, Cambridge.