Given that RLE3.1 is (speaking very broadbrushly) a stronger LGPL but with protections against utilizing a tampered compilation toolchain (see Eligible Compilation Process in RLE3.1) https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-3.1.html and given that the runtime of most GCC languages are licensed nowadays via GPL3+RLE3.1 instead of pure GPL3 (as opposed to the prior era: GMGPL pioneering the topic of runtime/template-generation additional permission grants in the GPL within the Ada community first during the GPL2 era) and given that the compiler itself of all GCC languages are licensed nowadays via pure GPL3 (as opposed to languages that dropped out of GCC such as CHILL that never made it to the GPL3 era), I have been wondering if licensing the runtime of each variant of ATS as pure GPL (i.e., without the RLE) limits the utilization of each variant of ATS to only app-domain software that itself is to be licensed as pure GPL3.
By licensing each ATS runtime as GPL3+RLE3.1, then each ATS compiler could be utilized worry-free by certain app-domains to publicly release binary-only closed-source software, which might be important to facilitate ATS's usage in the enterprise, in app-store apps, and wherever closed source of the resulting executable or DLL is important to the user. By licensing each ATS runtime as pure GPL3 as it is today, then each ATS compiler would be limited to the pure-GPL LIBRE/FLOSS fraction of the software industry that eschews even the open-source permissive licenses (e.g., MIT, Apache), leaving out the permissive-licensed open-source community. To relicense each ATS runtime source file, mentioning of the Runtime Library Exception 3.1 would need to be added to each such runtime source file—•not• at the top-level directory where the COPYING file appears. Just food for thought to ponder what the ATS community and Hongwei Xi overtly intend. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ats-lang-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ats-lang-users/307db4fc-13b9-4070-8d2e-2cd2912a61d0%40googlegroups.com.
