Re: [ANNOUNCE] XML/Ada 0.5 released

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <l866fqwjm0.fsf@berlin.int.act-europe.fr>, Emmanuel Briot says...
>
>"David Botton" <David@Botton.com> writes:
>
>> Is there any plans to have a public version of XML\Ada with the GNAT
>> Modified GPL?
>
>This is not the plan currently.

Ahhh. I'd foolishly assumed that the GPL was only going to be used for 0.x
releases.

>We will release soon some GNAT-Modified GPLed versions of the library to
>our customers that want support for XML/Ada and want to use it in their
>proprietary application.

You do realize that the GNAT-Modified GPL does not prevent your customers from
redistributing the software you give them to anyone/everyone else with the
GMGPL? Using easier Free Software licenses as a sales lever may only net you all
of 1 extra customer. :-)  But then you guys know way more about this business
than I do...

>However, we will probably leave the public versions under the GPL. This means
>that people can easily use this library for student projects, and for testing
>the technology.

That just means that XML\Ada will most likely *not* become the one standard Ada
XML parser, and someone else will probably end up writing a competing parser
under licensing terms more akin to the GMGPL.

Why not just use the same lever that you do with the Ada compiler? You could
claim that the only versions of XML\Ada certified to pass the XML conformance
suites (or whatever it is they call them) are the ones you directly distribute
to customers.

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