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=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.uzoreto.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!feeder.usenetexpress.com!feeder-in1.iad1.usenetexpress.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2018 15:39:52 -0500 Subject: Re: How to get Ada to ?cross the chasm?? Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: <1c73f159-eae4-4ae7-a348-03964b007197@googlegroups.com> From: Norman Worth Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:39:51 -0600 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0 SeaMonkey/2.49.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <17WdnStGQ5uF4nrHnZ2dnUU7-SnNnZ2d@giganews.com> X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-VxoHovMuLH1sXPRwdrSMx/VvQqQI18+dgERUznOSwkanuci1EqMU3nhbihK5grcKhGSTqM1KMtADyvN!E+GRGwn5BLoeAi+A0TdWroR0GffL1iU4ZW5sHXPEfkXJl4YguRchCPOykVjLpSc5NbGF6JEqALeS X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 4077 Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:51852 Date: 2018-04-30T14:39:51-06:00 List-Id: Simon Clubley wrote: > On 2018-04-17, Mehdi Saada <00120260a@gmail.com> wrote: >> I have trouble believing that Adacore (free) forbid completely selling >> softwares in other licenses as GPL or the likes of. I have no technical >> knowledge of these things, but I feel like your points of view are a >> bit... one sided ? > > Adacore force the GPL on any software developed using the Community > version. See > > https://www.adacore.com/gnatpro/comparison > > where it says (under Community) "For open source GPL software". > > Oh, and it's not "one sided", it's called giving the Ada community > a dose of cold reality. You can talk about the advantages of Ada all > you want but Ada's advantages mean nothing until the Ada compiler > situation matches the compiler situation for other languages. > > Any compiler which imposes the GPL on any software developed using > it would be absolutely dead on arrival in many environments especially > when compilers for other languages are available for free which do > not impose such constraints. > > GPL based software development is a small subset of all the software > development out there. > > Also, as far as I can see (and I am willing to be corrected here if > I am wrong) it means that you can't even write a library in Ada under > something other than the GPL if you are going to use the Community > version. As soon as you compile the library source with the Community > version, it falls under the GPL and hence any software using your > library also falls under the GPL. > > In order to create an Ada library with a LGPL or MIT licence > (for example), you have to fall back to the FSF version which > does not have that constraint. > > Simon. > One of the great fallacies propagated by the commercial software world is that GPL requires that software developed using tools licensed under it to be open source. That is not the case. Software developed using GNAT (or the other gcc family compilers) can be, and often is, proprietary. The compiler itself is open source, and direct derivatives of it must be open source, but it stops there. The libraries, although open source, are licensed so that they may be included in proprietary works. It is expensive to develop a compiler. The early decision to provide a free Ada compiler was very controversial. It was done to make sure that something was out there. The objections were mostly that it was unfair competition to commercial developers. But commercial compilers did appear, and some of them are excellent. Moreover, GNAT provided a cheap way for people to learn Ada. On the downside, it may have turned some large companies away from the language by lessening the profit potential of the language.