Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe

[Måns Rullgård <mru@inprovide.com>]

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.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@inprovide.com