Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe

[Måns Rullgård <mru@inprovide.com>]

Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> writes:

> Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> writes:
>
>> As has been settled on this list, Eclipse is not a derivative of Kaffe
>> and does not contain any copyright-protected portion of Kaffe.  It is
>> possible to claim that "Eclipse+Kaffe" is a work based on Kaffe, but
>> by the same argument, "Debian" is a work based on Kaffe, and the
>> rational interpretation is that both cases are mere aggregation.
>
> It seems to me that "mere aggregation" must be the smallest idea that
> is still aggregation.  For example, Emacs and Vim are merely
> aggregated in Debian.  wget and openssl are not merely aggregated,
> because there's more going on there.  It's not necessary to look in
> great detail at what *is* going on there -- it's enough to say that
> there is more there, so it's not merely aggregation.  It's aggregation
> and something else.

The "something else" here is known as LINKING.  The wget executable
specifically mentions libssl.so.0.9.7.  Dropping in another ssl
implementation won't necessarily work.

Whether or not this linking makes wget a derivative of openssl is
under debate.  Personally, I'd say it's not, but that's not relevant
to this discussion.

> I think it *is* legal to distribute a GPL-incompatible thing relying
> on GNU readline, as long as you aren't distributing readline with it.
>
> Similarly, Kaffe and Eclipse will be more than merely aggregated.
> It's certainly legal to distribute them separately, but when
> distributing them together the restrictions of GPL 2b come into play,
> unless it can be shown that they are merely aggregated.

Nothing in Eclipse mentions anything which is specific to Kaffe.
The existence of Kaffe is irrelevant to Eclipse.

I see a fundamental difference between on one side the *contents* of a
package directly reference the *contents* of another package, and on
the other side the package *meta-data* of one package mentioning other
*packages*.  Any connections here are created by the packaging system,
and shall have no relevance to the contents of the packages.

Will the situation be any different if a user installs Debian,
including Kaffe and Eclipse, and then deletes the everything related
to the packaging, only leaving the actual program files?

> Since there is a stronger relationship there than the weakest relation
> that could be called aggregation, it isn't mere aggregation.  It's
> aggregation and something else.  Thus, GPL 2b applies.

Here the something else is called FUD, no more, no less.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@inprovide.com