Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
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On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 16:16:41 -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> Raul Miller <moth@debian.org> writes:
>
>> If there actually is something going wrong, I'd really like for someone
>> to spell out what it is in some fashion which addresses the above points.
>
> Everything you said there seems reasonable to me (at first glance).
> It's fine for the Kaffe developers and fine for the Eclipse
> developers. But it's not OK for Debian to distribute the a program
> which contains a copy of the GPL'd Kaffe and a copy of the
> GPL-incompatible CPL'd Eclipse, linked together.
>
> Ignore the GPL FAQ for a minute and look at the GPL's 2b:
>
> b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
> whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
> part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
> parties under the terms of this License.
>
> The Debian OS contains Kaffe. So the Debian OS as a whole must be
> licensed under the terms of the GPL. There are two exceptions to
> this:
>
> First, there's a separation exception:
>
> If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the
> Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate
> works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply
> to those sections when you distribute them as separate works.
>
> This means that it's fine for Kaffe and Eclipse to be distributed
> separately. But it's not OK to throw them both on a CD and label it
> "Debian OS", if running eclipse loads a program made out of copies of
> Kaffe and Eclipse.
grep is licensed under the GPL. We most likely distribute thousands of
shell scripts which are not under teh GPL, which make use of grep in the
same way Eclipse would make use of Kaffe: required at runtime, seperate
from it, but expected to work together.
How do we do this?
>
> There's also the OS exception, which Debian can't use because it
> distributes the whole OS -- even though JVMs are plausibly part of a
> reasonable OS at this time.
>
> -Brian
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