Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe

[Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>]

On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 02:31:13PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> Again, this isn't about the copyright holder's right to control
> production of derived works.  This is about the copyright holder's
> right to control copying and distribution of copies.  Reading GPL 2b,
> I cannot see permission to distribute a CD with Eclipse and Kaffe on
> it, such that Eclipse runs on top of Kaffe when I insert the CD.

Copies of what?

The license on Kaffe applies to Kaffe and ...

  "This License applies to any program or other work which contains a
   notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
   under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below,
   refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
   means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
   that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
   either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
   language. ..."

If Kaffe + Eclipse 3.0 is not a derivative work of Kaffe under copyright
law, then the rest of the GPL is irrelevant.

We have some evidence that Kaffe + Eclipse 3.0 might be a derivative
work under copyright law (Eclipse runs with Kaffe as the JVM).

We have some other evidence that Keffe + Eclipse 3.0 is not a derivative
work under copyright law (we have people saying that Eclipse 3.0 uses
only java byte codes whose semantics are independent of the JVM).

We also have the evidence of the dependencies in Eclipse, which do not
require Kaffe at any point -- Eclipse can be built and used just as
easily with any of several JVMs.

None of these statements, in and of themselves, would settle the issue
in the general case, but let's focus on this case.

In other words: unless we have some very good evidence that Kaffe pluse
Exlipse 3.0 is a "Program" in the sense defined by the GPL, the rest of
the GPL requirements are irrelevant.

Can you provide such evidence?

If not, do you have any suggestions about good ways to find such evidence?

If not, what grounds do you have for you claiming that those GPL
restrictions are relevant to this discussion?

Thanks,

-- 
Raul