Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
Måns Rullgård <mru@inprovide.com> writes:
> Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>
>> Måns Rullgård <mru@inprovide.com> writes:
>>
>>> Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>>>
>>>> Dalibor Topic <robilad@kaffe.org> writes:
>>>>
>>>>>> When I instruct my computer running the Debian OS to load and run
>>>>>> eclipse, the code from some JVM package and the code from the Eclipse
>>>>>> package and from dozens of others are loaded into memory. The process
>>>>>> on my computer is mechanical, so we should look back and see who has
>>>>>> designed and created this particular combination. In this case, it
>>>>>> was Debian, who took the top level Eclipse component and selected
>>>>>> a particular JVM and particular support libraries to include.
>>>>>
>>>>> That's the 'running is illegal/GPL puts restrictions on use' fallacy. :)
>>>>
>>>> I'm not talking about running; I'm talking about making a copy of
>>>> Eclipse and a copy of Kaffe and putting them both on an end-user's
>>>> system such that when I type "eclipse" I get a program made out of
>>>> both.
>>>
>>> So what? Eclipse is still only a Java program being interpreted by
>>> Kaffe, which is perfectly within the limits set by the GPL.
>>
>> Not quite true. It also incorporates the GNU Classpath libraries
>> which are distributed with / part of Kaffe. There clearly are
>> bindings provided there. The GNU Classpath package is GPL'd, right?
>
> GNU Classpath is nothing but an implementation of the standard Java
> class library. A program using standard published interface is not a
> derivative of *any* implementation, and certainly not of GNU
> Classpath. Besides, the license of GNU Classpath allows it to be used
> by any program, under any license, if I am not mistaken.
You're completely correct about both issues.
Fortunately, the sentence beginning "A program using..." is not
relevant to my argument. I'm not talking about derivative works. I'm
talking about an entire copy of Kaffe. Debian contains a copy of
Kaffe. So any parts of Debian that aren't merely aggregated with
Kaffe need to be distributed under the terms of the GPL. Read GPL 2,
particularly 2b.
-Brian
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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