Re: can one build commercial applications with latest gnat and other licenses related questions...

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

Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de> writes:

> M E Leypold wrote:

> Anything else will indeed be against the intent of the GPL which is
> stated in the Preamble, "to make sure the software is free for all
> its users" (by way of forcing derived works to be GPL, too).

Well. We're still talking about a compiler here? Than -- Gnat will
stay free for all it's users even if one would write closed source
software with it.

That one can _buy_ the freedom to write unfree software seems to
specially obnoxious if we stay with the moral argument that it is good
to write free software and that one must be forced to write only free
software with a free tool. So my users freedom has a simple price tag:
15K/year. Cheap that, actually.

Let's put it plain: ACT is using GPL as business weapon. If the ACT
compiler would be the only available one at the market I'd call their
Acdemic offer "bait", since you could only exercise the skill set by
generating revenue for them. But since there is another compiler, I'll
now cease arguing about GPL Gnat. That was never my issue, they are
free to do with their compiler what they want. I'm free to use FSF
Gnat or go to another language.

The library situation (not the Gnat GPL runtime, whose GPL licensing
is only a legal trick, but I'm talking about Florist and GtkAda,
perhaps other libs as well) is another issue and a repeat: It's
hursting the community. All Ada advocacy is in vain, if there are no
(commercially usable) OS bindings or bindings to a common and portable
graphical toolkit. People (small businesses, either software
developers or small engineering companies for their internal tools)
will use what is available without strings attached. No use pining in
c.l.a about the abundance of badly written, unsecure C and C++
software and how much better Ada could do, then.

Some other communites also have the problem of "being forced" to write
free software. Others don't. I wonder how the last kind can cope, if
it is necessary to lock tool use and library use down to "only with
free and open software".

And please note, that I'm an advocate of free software. But I can
hardly justify contributing back to the community in my working time
if the license situation excludes me from using (i.e.) libraries in a
project. I even don't complain about that, if a library has been GPL
from the beginning. About what I really complain, is that libraries
seem to change there license and underhandedly at that.

Regards -- Markus