Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
On Thu, 2005-13-01 at 15:28 -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> "Michael K. Edwards" <m.k.edwards@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:21:51 -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen
> > <bts@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > [snip]
> >> So in answer to your direct question: the unlinked binary isn't
> >> derived from any of them. The complete binary, including its
> >> libraries, included whichever one Debian shipped it with.
> >
> > No, it's not a derivative work in a copyright sense at any stage.
>
> I didn't say it was. I said that the complete program includes the
> libraries. That is, the program called vim distributed by Debian
> includes libc, because when I say "apt-get install vim" I get libc6
> installed onto my system, and when I then instruct my computer to run
> vim, it loads libc and some vim-specific code into memory.
>
> > That's a phrase with a legal meaning, and combining by any means that
> > isn't itself a creative act doesn't create one.
>
> I understand that quite well, thank you. You are ignoring the
> creative act performed by the programmer who arranged calls to
> functions within libc. That was creative effort on his part which
> critically involves a copy of libc.
>
> Put differently: my claim is not that vim is derivative of libc. My
> claim is that Vim includes a copy of libc! It may also be a
> derivative -- I don't think the vim-specific parts are, but the
> vim-specific parts plus the libc copy might be.
I think Debian 'control' files that state Build-depends: and Depends:
show quite explicitely what pieces of software Debian distributes
"bound together", which is actually rather nice.
Of course (just to make sure nobody misunderstands) having a
GPL-incompatible program depend on a GPL program is not yet a problem.
But if such a program is linked against GPLed libraries, whose are
additionally constrained by explicit 'depends' on a specific library,
it pretty much says:
a) when you apt-get source, we'll compile this GPL-incompatible program
against this GPLed library
b) when you apt-get install, we'll run this GPL-incompatible program
with a GPLed library.
Putting it differently: if that was allowed, then why do we need glibc
to be LGPLed, and not GPLed? After all the C language and its basic
libraries are also standarized to great extent.
But having glibc purely GPL just doesn't sound good, does it?
Grzegorz B. Prokopski
--
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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