Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
Dalibor Topic <robilad@kaffe.org> writes:
But distributing them as one work -- say, the Debian OS -- is covered
by the GPL. In what way is Debian not a "work that you distribute or
publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the
Program (Kaffe) or any part thereof"?
That's the 'Debian OS includes a GPLd work, so everthing must be GPLd'
fallacy. :)
It is in the same way the Debian OS is not illegal to distribute just
because it in whole or in part contains both the Linux kernel and the
apache web server, as the GPL is incomatible with the apache license.
But as the GPL of one work does not put restrictions on separate,
non-derived works distributed alongside it, everything is fine.
Were your intepretation correct, the GPL would not be DFSG-free, and the
kernel, gcc, bash, and all that would have to move to non-free leaving
nothing in main, afaict.
There is a slight mistake in what you have said. My claim is that
Eclipse does not infringe, but a work containing Eclipse and Kaffe
entwined does. Something copyrightable, GPLd from Kaffe has to end up
in the copy of *Debian* that is being distributed, which it clearly
does.
Debian does not distribute Kaffe and Eclipse entwined though. Eclipse
contains no part of Kaffe nor is it derived from it. Neither is Kaffe
derived from Eclipse or contains parts thereof. So there is nothing
copyrightable from one work ever ending up in the other and no mixing
happens in the separate packages.
Debian OS already has the licenses to distribute both eclipse and Kaffe.
As no DFSG-free license places restrictitons on data distributed on the
same medium alongside it, there is no problem in doing so.
It doesn't concern Eclipse any more than distributing the Linux
kernel, gcc, bash, or anything else under the GPL does, because to all
these programs, Eclipse is a bunch of data, just like for Kaffe.
Were that the case, Eclipse could go in Main without Kaffe being
there at all. But it's not in main right now -- because there's no
free JVM for it to depend on.
Eclipse is not in main because of debian's policy for main, which says,
afaik among other things, that a work can only go into main if both the
license of the work is DFSG-free and it is buildable with other works in
main. And the latter just happened.
As Gadek is annoyed that Eclipse 3 builds and works with Kaffe but not
with his 'competing' SableVM, he tried to scare the Eclipse 3 packager
from submitting it by shouting that running Eclipse on Kaffe is illegal
(see subject ;).
That's all a part of a long FUD campaign against users, developers and
distributors of Kaffe led by a few SableVM developers since 2002, in
order to scare people into using, developing and distributing SableVM
instead of Kaffe.
I'm sorry for using very graphical terms on this list and to vomiting
all over you in particular. I've lost my patience there. I've been at
the receiving end of this anti-Kaffe, anti-GPL fud every couple of
months since mid-2002, and I've been at the receiving end of vague
suggestions that I could be sued in Canada[1], the home of SableVM
developers, for interpreting the GPL in the way that is not to a SableVM
developer's liking, and so on, and so on, despite that the original
authors of Kaffe clearly interpreted the GPL in a very permissive way,
as can be seen here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20011211201322/http://www.kaffe.org/FAQ.html
"Can I run proprietary Java applications and native JNI libraries under
Kaffe?
Yes, you can. Kaffe's choice of GPL does not affect your ability to run
any Java or JNI-based code that you could run on any other Java virtual
machine."
I'm seriously sick of having to go through all this repeteadly debunked
nonsense just because Kaffe's existence and usefullness interferes with
someone's business model, and being repetedly harrased and abused by them.
cheers,
dalibor topic
[1] "Do not forget that Copyright infrigement is a criminal offence in
many countries, including Canada, not a civil matter. In other words,
you can be prosecuted even if the copyright holder has not initiated any
action against you." in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-java/2004/03/msg00065.html
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