Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> writes:
> Dalibor Topic <robilad@kaffe.org> writes:
>
>> How Kaffe, the GPld interpreter, goes about loading GPLd parts of
>> *itself* into memory, whether it uses JNI, KNI, dlopen, FFI, libtool,
>> or other "bindings", or whether it asks the user to tilt switches on
>> an array of light bulbs is irrelevant to the copyright law. The GPld
>> interpreter still can't impose restrictions on its input or use. Just
>> like a GPLd garbage collector going off in the background of my text
>> editor when I'm composing a reply doesn't suddendly make this reply
>> message GPLd.
>>
>> Now, before you go off ranting about Kaffe's native libraries, please
>> take a moment to let the fact sink in that while these native
>> libraries are the result of Kaffe developers being a somewhat clever
>> bunch at developing software and having heard about benefits of
>> seperating one's program into sepearte modules, those modules are
>> nevertheless *a part of the interpreter*, and as the copyright law
>> says, the GPLd interpreter can't impose restrictions on its
>> input. They even get compiled in statically on Debian for debian's
>> kaffe package.
>
> Very nicely said. This is exactly why it's legal to make and
> distribute Eclipse and other free Java programs in the first place.
>
> On the other hand, it's also exactly why it's problematic for Debian
> to distribute an Eclipse which incorporates a copy of the GPL'd Kaffe.
Please start using a dictionary with the same definition of "include",
"incorporate" and similar words as everybody else's dictionaries use.
--
Måns Rullgård
mru@inprovide.com
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