Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
On Wed, 2005-12-01 at 02:49 +0000, Dalibor Topic wrote:
> Grzegorz B. Prokopski <gadek <at> debian.org> writes:
>
> > See http://sablevm.org/wiki/License_FAQ for details.
>
> Gadek, last time you've taken your claims to debian-legal, noone on debian-legal
> agreed with your interpretation of the GPL. Sorry. Maybe your interpretation is
> not all you make it up to be. ;)
Neither they agreed with yours, as you probably remember, but that's not
the point. The point is, that, as you've mentioned yourself, there ARE
non-GPLed JVMs (IKVM, gij, SableVM) that could be used to build Eclipse
w/o breaching GPL.
However if nobody stands up and say clearly, that there IS a problem,
that GPL and CPL/APL are NOT compatible, and cannot be linked together,
then we'll still see plenty people WASTING THEIR TIME on things that
cannot legally benefit Debian Project and Debian users.
Your POV, as Kaffe developer, not Debian, might be of course different,
but I do not mean to bring up discussion whether Kaffe's "official"
standing on the understanding GPL is right or not.
> I find it tiresome to rehash the same disagreement about interpeting the GPL
> over and over again each time there is a new SableVM release to promote.
Be it ANY JVM, but be it legally usable for the task. I would be happy
if SableVM was used, because of very practical reasons. GCJ/GIJ we have
in Debian has realatively old Classpath, compared to SableVM, so might
not be good enough to run Eclipse. OTOH I have not noticed IKVM being
packaged. Have I missed any non-GPLed VM? If not, then I think using
SableVM gives the best chances of success.
> I personally think that SableVM is a vey nice VM. And I wish you more success
> than you can handle. Seriously. May you all be rich and famous and icons of
> scientific research and may all your dreams come true.
That's very nice of you. Could you please keep personal jokes out of
the picture? Thanks.
> So that we can that fine day finally stop having to go though this ritual 'Our
> GPL interpretation is longer than yours, although we are not a lawyers, either'
> discussion each time there is another point release of SableVM. It's so cheap
> and boring and repetitive and repetitive and repetitive ... you get the idea.
Well, I thought about it. Last time we discussed the issue I did not
know that much about how a JVM is bound to its library, to the program
it executes/interprets/JITs etc. Time has passed and I see not much
justification for your "interpretation" anymore. And I do not think any
CS-educated lawyer would see.
> > Did you try to build other architectures? If the build process involves
> > using a JVM then it would be best to use a JVM that works on as many
> > architectures supported by Debian as possible. Last time I asked
> > Dalibor it still had serious troubles on many non-x86 architectures.
>
> By all means, please make it run on all VMs packaged in debian. Given that we
> all use Classpath now, more or less, it should all work, more or less. JamVM is
> another very fine choice, and so are gij and IKVM as well. I hope I haven't left
JamVM is also GPL, as you might remember, so it has exactly the same
issues that Kaffe has in connection with GPL-incompatible code.
> anyone out, because I think all GNU Classpath-based runtimes are great. The
> more, the merrier.
Sure. What does it have to do with the issue?
As we've been thru the issue once already, I ask you to at least cut off
personal attacks. Otherwise you'll gurantee we won't get to any
conclusions.
Cheers,
Grzegorz B. Prokopski
PS: I really think GPL is a great license, most probably the greatest of
our times. But one has to bear in mind that it was designed to prevent
certain misuses of GPLed software. It proves to be a pain from time to
time for some projects, who ie. need to use OpenSSL (probably the piece
of sofware that causes the most grief for developers of GPLed
software). In such case they usually ask all code authors to agree for
an exception that would allow for linking with such GPL-incompatible
piece of sofware.
I have not seen yet a case where one would argue till death that one can
link GPLed code with OpenSSL. But running Eclipse with GPLed JVM is not
different, yet, we see argument... I could understand that when there
were times that Kaffe was the only capable JVM and everybody was more
inclined to use "Kaffe-specific", highly permissive interpretation
of GPL.
But these times are past. As Dalibor mentioned, we DO HAVE JVMs that
CAN legally run GPL-incompatible code, so why not start respecting the
GPL as we should?
--
Grzegorz B. Prokopski <gadek@sablevm.org>
SableVM - Free, LGPL'ed Java VM http://sablevm.org
Why SableVM ?!? http://sablevm.org/wiki/Features
Debian GNU/Linux - the Free OS http://www.debian.org
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