[gtkada] License

[Preben Randhol]

Torsten Leistikow <leistikow at stn-atlas.de> wrote on 12/09/2001 (12:01) :
> Hello,
> 
> I am planning to use GtkAda for the user interface for some small test tools
> for proprietary software modules.
> 
> When I am reading the header of the GtkAda files (can the license
> information be found somewhere else?) in the right way, this should be ok.
> 
> Am I allowed to give such programs to a third party?
> 
> Is it ok, to deliver the executable allone (together with the necessary
> DLLs)? Must there be some additional license text included?
> 
> Is it better to deliver just my sources, so that the thir party can compile
> and link them with GtkAda on its own?
> 
> Or is this all illegal and I should look for another GUI-package?

In the header files it says:

--          GtkAda - Ada95 binding for the Gimp Toolkit              --
--                                                                   --
--                     Copyright (C) 1998-2000                       --
--        Emmanuel Briot, Joel Brobecker and Arnaud Charlet          --
--                                                                   --
-- This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or     --
-- modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public               --
-- License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either      --
-- License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either      --
-- version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.  --
--                                                                   --
-- This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,   --
-- but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of    --
-- MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU --
-- General Public License for more details.                          --
--                                                                   --
-- You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public         --
-- License along with this library; if not, write to the             --
-- Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,      --
-- Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.                                       --
--                                                                   --
-- As a special exception, if other files instantiate generics from  --
-- this unit, or you link this unit with other files to produce an   --
-- executable, this  unit  does not  by itself cause  the resulting  --
-- executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This  --
-- exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the   --
-- executable file  might be covered by the  GNU Public License.     --


The last part of the license says that you do not have to put your code
under the GPL license. So unless you use other GPLed libraries without
this exception you should have no license problems. Disclaimer: I'm not
a lawyer ;-)

-- 
Preben Randhol ------------------- http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/ --
                 «For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.»