Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 02:45:23PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> >> 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 GPL+linking exception which allows it to link with
> > code that is licensed with GPL non-compatible licenses.
>
> Thanks. That sounds like an important piece of evidence. So
> certainly the GNU Classpath authors think that their code is copied
> into programs built using it, and the GPL restricts that copying.
>
> I would assume that the same applies to Kaffe.
Well, if gcc has an explicit "output of this program isn't subject to
the GPL", even though the FSF says[1] that the output of a program
is generally not subject to the terms of the program outputting it
anyway, that probably means that it *might* be arguably subject to
it (depending on how much of gcc ends up in gcc's output), and the FSF
is giving an explicit exception to eliminate any doubt.
So, I wouldn't read too far into what the authors think based on the
existance of an exception (not to the extent of "certainly"); there
are legitimate reasons to make exceptions, even when they're expected
to be a no-op.
[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLOutput
--
Glenn Maynard
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