Michael K. Edwards wrote:
[Regarding the compatibility of a GPL JVM with Java code under other licenses; cross-posted from debian-java to debian-legal]
[cut noise about FSF]
But if the Kaffe copyright holders interpret the relationship between Java bytecode and GPL code to be loose enough not to create aderivative work, I think they have at least US case law behind them.
The relationship between GPL, interpreters and bytecode has been rehashed here already before (with the same participants, old hat, and all that ;):
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/11/msg00010.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/11/msg00026.htmlAs you can see, bytecode does not necessarily make the relationship looser. Nevertheless, the claim that is made by a particular developer of a 'competing' VM project on debian-java about running Eclipse on Kaffe being illegal, is wrong, in my non-lawyerish opinion, because Eclipse's source code or bytecode does not derive specifically from Kaffe's interpreter or class library, afaik, but uses 'standard' Java APIs all the way. Just as explained above in the links.
cheers, dalibor topic