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

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

"Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:

> The only thing the first customer can do to prevent that is to sign a
> contract with you, whereby you assign your copyright to him (which as I
> understand is not legal in Germany), or you agree not to distribute
> your program to anyone else.  At this point, the GPL gives the four
> freedoms to the (sole) licensee, while at the same time the contract
> restricts *your* freedom to redistribute. If I were a customer, I would
> systematically insist on such terms when I bought custom-made software.

Exactly. Two complications arise:

 - I don't want to hand over exclusively my container and my widget
   library :-).

 - The customer, as I have written, is not sure, wether such a
   contract with me is binding. After all: I have the source, the libs
   are under GPL -- doesn't that entitle me to distribute under GPL (a
   right I cannot waive w/o the GPL lapsing for the libs).  So the
   customer is not sure. "Not sure" in business translates as
   "risk". Instead of jumping through the hoops to consult a lawyer,
   who might or might not give a definite answer to that, they decide
   to go with another offer that looks less fraught with ifs.

> 
> > On can also just deliver mangled code to the customer with stripped
> > comments and w/o documentation. One can do all that, but actually it's
> > bending the spirit of GPL and obeying the letter only.
> 
> I agree, but as I explained, that's what you would do if you wanted to
> prevent your customers from modifying your program. But as I understand
> it, that's not the problem you have now; the problem is that your
> customer wants to prevent *you* from distributing your programs to
> their competitors, right? Only a contract can do that.

Can it? And can the customer be convinced that it can? That is where
lawyerly territory starts ("Quick, the spell of protection, say it
now: 'IANAL, IANAL, IANAL'") and customers feel unwell in that
territory as well. Especially for small projects, so they tend to
avoid complications of that kind as a general rule.

Back to libraries like GtkAda and the posibbly future GPL Florist
which are my real issue in all that discussion: I'd prefer a simple
and clear cut situation (like a well documented GMGPL) to a number of
confusing fringe case and legal workarounds.

It doesn't equate to freedom in my book to have to refer to a lawyer
all the time. Quite the contrary.

Regards -- Markus