Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

Lewis Jardine <debian@catbox.co.uk> writes:

> Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
>
>> The license on Kaffe does not in any way inhibit distribution of
>> copies of Eclipse.  I don't believe for a second that Eclipse is
>> derivative of any particular JVM.  But Eclipse+Kaffe does contain a
>> copy of Kaffe.  The GPL grants permission for distribution of copies
>> of Kaffe.  It does this in its section 2.
>> GPL 2b says that if distributing a combined work which contains a
>> copy
>> of a GPL'd work, then the entire result must be under the terms of the
>> GPL.  This is that case exactly.
>
> Something that worries me about this interpretation (not to suggest
> that it's incorrect; I can see no fault in the logic, except perhaps
> that Kaffe is not modified when it is put on the same CD as Eclipse,
> and thus may not form a 'work based on the program', as per section 2)
> is that in an operating system distribution, for each possible joining
> relationship (for example Java byte code <-> JVM) there is a number of
> license combinations equal the the product of the number of works on
> each side of the relationship, and if even one of these combinations
> is of GPL and [GPL-incompatible-but-Free], the whole distribution
> loses permission to distribute the GPLed code.

I think most of those are just aggregation on a medium of
distribution.  Only the tree of dependencies has to be checked.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu