Re: How to get Ada to ?cross the chasm??

["Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Thursday, May 3, 2018 at 12:00:20 PM UTC-5, Simon Wright wrote:
> Not actually copyright, since (judging by the 2017 CE) it's assigned to
> the FSF anyway. It's a licencing issue.

You do bring up an interesting point:  because AdaCore appears to immediately assign all rights to copy to Free Software Foundation the moment that AdaCore employees invoke the file-save function in their text editor in files comprising GNAT and its portion-of-GCC runtime, it seems that only Free Software Foundation would have legal standing to fully enforce the GPLv3-without-Runtime-Exception in GNAT GPL Community Edition.  As a spectator in the public audience not a party to any such dispute, it would be a fascinating to see years or decades from now whether a maintainer of FSF GNAT who wholesale copied nontrivial portions of GNAT GPL Community Edition into FSF GNAT repositories would evoke the ire of FSF enough (while maintaining FSF's own intellectual property in FSF repositories) for FSF to take legal action effectively against itself.  It is not clear at all precisely which nail AdaCore would hang its “but it is ours all ours” hat on—apparently certainly none of the files that say Copyright Free Software Foundation instead of Copyright AdaCore, Inc.

Please note that any official maintainer of FSF GNAT acting under authority of FSF would seem free to declare that FSF is evoking its right as owner of the rights to copy GNAT to relicense any portion of GNAT GPL Community Edition to which FSF has been assigned the rights to copy, adjusting the license for that copy from ‘•without• Runtime Exception’ to ‘•with• Runtime Exception’ as GPLv3 seems to overtly permit in section 7 Additional Terms “You may place additional permissions on material, added by you to a covered work, for which you have or can give appropriate copyright permission.”  FSF and its official maintainers deemed to be working on behalf of FSF for FSF-assigned/owned intellectual property [e.g., FSF GNAT] are the “you” therein.  The Runtime Exception would be the “additional permission” therein.  AdaCore's irrevocable assignment to FSF would be the “for which you have or can give appropriate copyright permission” therein; FSF, not AdaCore, effectively owns it at the moment of irrevocable assignment of copyright of that file; that is what assignment means.

I am not a lawyer and have not passed the bar in any jurisdiction.  I am speaking for only myself in novelty-entertainment value for my own personal enjoyment as a purely-hypothetical/theoretical logic exercise regarding my understanding of plain-meaning reading of English prose.  Do not rely on any of this without consulting a lawyer.