Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> wrote:
> Walter Landry writes:
>
> > When Debian puts Eclipse into main, Debian is distributing Eclipse to
> > be used with Kaffe. When it is in contrib, Debian is distributing
> > Eclipse to be used by something outside of main.
>
> To the extent the first part is true, the second part is false. Also
> to the extent the first part is true, it is irrelevant to the GPL.
>
> To use an example that should be clearer: According to your argument,
> when Debian puts <GPL-incompatible package X> into main, Debian is
> distributing <package X> to be used with Linux. If that is true, when
> <package X> is in contrib, Debian is still distributing <package X> to
> be used with Linux. That OS Y provides a Linux personality is
> irrelevant.
This is something that I am still considering [1]. I am not ignoring
the point, I just haven't come up with a self-consistent solution.
> Debian also distributes GPL-incompatible documentation in PDF format.
> To the best of my knowledge, the only packages in main that can
> display PDFs are licensed under the GPL. Why does this not create the
> same kind of "whole work" capture effect? PDF may not have the
> language flexibility of Java, but it has programmable features.
Unless there exist printers that can print raw PDF, I think you have a
point. Do you have any idea how many of these PDF's there are?
Converting them to postscript would solve the problem, since there are
many printers that handle raw postscript.
Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00873.html
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