Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> wrote:
> Walter Landry writes:
> 
> > Not that special.  His argument makes sense to me.  If Kaffe is
> > required for Eclipse to run, then it looks like a whole work to me.
> > However, Kaffe is not the only JVM that can run Eclipse.  But it is
> > the only one in main.  That is why Eclipse needs to stay in contrib.
> 
> Can you elaborate?  Its dependencies seem to be satisfiable using
> main.  Last time I read policy, that is sufficient to put it in main.

As I understand it, Eclipse would require Kaffe to go into main.  If
Kaffe is not suitable for Eclipse, then Eclipse would require a
non-free JVM to run.  That puts Eclipse in contrib.

> How many GPL-incompatible packages exist that can only be compiled by
> gcc or compilers outside of main?  Why should those not be moved into
> contrib because of that build dependency?

gcc has a special clause in its license that exempts programs that
have been compiled by gcc from being subject to the GPL.  It looks
like much, but not all, of Kaffe has a similar exemption.  From the
Debian copyright file, valist.m4 and libraries/javalib/kjc.jar seem
like the problematic ones.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu