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: 103376,3e26dfa741e64e5f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,UTF8 Path: g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!news.glorb.com!newspeer2.se.telia.net!se.telia.net!masternews.telia.net.!newsb.telia.net.POSTED!not-for-mail From: =?UTF-8?B?QmrDtnJuIFBlcnNzb24=?= User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6-1.1.fc4 (X11/20050720) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available References: <1126875543.239666.325290@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <3467d$432b0af1$49956f8$22115@ALLTEL.NET> <9810292.iL9QpZxmrM@linux1.krischik.com> <87mzmbbn6x.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> <8764szbf8s.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> In-Reply-To: <8764szbf8s.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-ID: Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 22:59:41 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 217.209.116.179 X-Complaints-To: abuse@telia.com X-Trace: newsb.telia.net 1126997981 217.209.116.179 (Sun, 18 Sep 2005 00:59:41 CEST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 00:59:41 CEST Organization: Telia Internet Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4849 Date: 2005-09-17T22:59:41+00:00 List-Id: Ludovic Brenta wrote: > The coupling with the compiler is no problem from a legal standpoint, > because the compiler's license has no effect on the executables > produced with it. As you probably know, if you read someone else's source code and then write down what you've read and distribute it with a different license, then you infringe on the original author's copyright. Therefore, someone who's maintaining a GMGPL fork of the Gnat runtime should be careful to avoid looking at any GPL version of the runtime. Because of the tight coupling, I assume that the fork would have to be updated to exactly match each version of the compiler. Because it would have to match exactly, I think this would be difficult to do without looking at AdaCore's changes. I'm not sure whether it would be legally safe to read the sources of the compiler to figure out what would need to be changed in the runtime. A lawyer might argue that you've transferred "intellectual property" from the compiler into the runtime. If one couldn't look at the compiler sources, it would be even more difficult to update the runtime. That's why I thought the tight coupling would be a problem. On the other hand, I've never quite understood what makes a runtime library different from any other library. Maybe a runtime isn't quite as magic as I think. Anyway, let's hope we'll never have to deal with these problems in practice. -- Björn Persson PGP key A88682FD omb jor ers @sv ge. r o.b n.p son eri nu