Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
Am Mittwoch, 12. Januar 2005 22:11 schrieb Dalibor Topic:
> 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 a derivative 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.html
>
> As 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.
FSF sees it like this:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL
"When the interpreter just interprets a language, the answer is no.
The interpreted program, to the interpreter, is just data; a free
software license like the GPL, based on copyright law, cannot limit
what data you use the interpreter on. You can run it on any data
(interpreted program), any way you like, and there are no
requirements about licensing that data to anyone."
The issue is a bit different with JNI libraries.
Michael
--
Homepage: http://www.worldforge.org/
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