Re: Illustrating JVM bindings

[Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 09:38:19AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> > But we don't really want to set up a copyright assignment regime, so
> > the FSF's insistence on waving the preliminary injunction club at
> > unwary linkers is a red flag.

Let's consider a release of libFoo under terms guided by your
interpretation of the GPL and cases like lexmark and lotus v. borland:

  We are releasing libFoo under the GPL, but hold the interface and
  header files to be public domain.

  In GPL terms, the implementation -- the *.c files, and files built
  from those .c files at compile time -- are the Program, and must be
  distributed only under the terms of the GPL while the headers -- *.h
  files and build scripts -- may be incoroprated in anyone's program
  without copyright being an issue.

  In GPL terms, linking your program with libFoo is mere aggregation,
  and using your program in conjunction with libFoo constitutes running
  libFoo as a program.

  The GPL requirements for source code release when you modify libFoo
  only apply to the implementation itself -- not to programs which happen
  to use libFoo.

As near as I can tell, this kind of release notice would satisfy the
concerns your company has about the GPL.

If that's not the case, I think you need to better understand the nature
of your company's concerns.

Thanks,

-- 
Raul