Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe

[Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>]

Brian Thomas Sniffen writes:

> They are being put onto the same CD image by Debian.  Well, will be
> put, if this goes into main.  Also, when one is requested from apt the
> other is installed.  Those links mean that this isn't mere
> aggregation, since mere aggregation would exist without them.  That
> is, in order to count as a mere aggregation, they can be no closer
> than the furthest they could be and still be said to be aggregated.

Are we considering Debian-specific issues or general GPL compliance?

If the former, then we should be very careful about going beyond what
is required by law or is clearly stated in policy or the SC.

If the latter, then we should not confuse the GPL's requirements with
Debian-specific annotations.  Whether a work is derivative or a mere
aggregation is decidable by looking only at its content, not at its
metadata, and Requires: is metadata.

> Certainly if one's only being allowed into main because the other is
> there, they're not merely aggregated.

I disagree.

"Requires: kaffe | java2-runtime", or whatever the exact requirement
is, is the Policy-specified way of saying "this requires something
that provides the java2-runtime interface, and if you don't have a
package like that already, kaffe provides it."

Without certain mandatory packages, nothing would be allowed into
main.  By your argument, that means mandatory packages are not merely
aggregated with everything else, and GPLed mandatory packages mean
that everything in main must be GPL compatible.

Michael Poole