Dear Michael,First, this will be my last message on this thread. I have expressed, I think, a quite clear opinion. You may debate its merit or even discard it if you wish. My goal was not to dictate the conduct of any body, but to clarify the understanding of the GPL I got during a long private discussion with Richard M. Stallman (RMS), its creator, when deciding of SableVM's license. Maybe RMS knows nothing about licenses, and maybe I don't either... You seem so confident to know more than me about the matter!
I will reply to some of your assertions below. Michael Poole wrote:
There's quite some evidence of this. Can you install (normally) the Eclipse package and run it without Kaffe, on your Debian system (as defined above: main, 100% free software)? No.This is irrelevant: The law does not care whether anyone restricts himself to what Debian restricts itself to.
But, the law does care about "publishing works" (it says you cannot, by default, unless authorized by a license), and the GPL does mandate some very precise conditions for publishing works. If Debian (or others) does distribute main as a single work (as it is recommended for CDs), then I think that it is an issue.
The SC also recognizes that many users will use non-Debian software. For example, from the end of SC 5: "although non-free software isn't a part of Debian, we support its use, and we provide infrastructure (such as our bug-tracking system and mailing lists) for non-free software packages." That infrastructure includes identifying possible dependencies on non-free software that may satisfy the dependency of free software.
True.
As has been explained on debian-legal, the interpretation you propose would mean that the GPL is a non-DFSG-free license.
This is not true, as far as I can tell. The GPL has a very clear "mere aggregation" exception (as well as other exceptions for the OS, compiler, etc). So, it does qualify as DFSG-free.
More specifically, without such exceptions, it would fail DFSG 9. But it does not fail it, because it has these exceptions.
Side note: "The GPL would fail DFSG if we took your interpretation" is not a valid argument to reject my opinion.
The rest of your post is either intentionally or incompetently misleading, since Java's idea of binary compatibility means that a compiled Eclipse package does not contain any copyrightable portion of the class libraries that provide declarations to the compiler.
According to the GNU GPL, which is the legal document that grants you (or not) the right to publish a work that contains GPL work, the source code of a work is:
...For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable...When you use Kaffe's class library classes (in source or binary form) for compiling eclipse, you cannot say that they are not used by your compiler (jikes, kjc, gcj) as "input" along Eclipse source code.
In other words:
kaffe class-library \
+--> jikes --> eclipse binary code
eclipse source code /
Now, this output is, as far as I can tell, a derivative of the input,
which contains GPL (no linking exception) work.
Now, nothing prevents the eclipse package to depend on the "separate" classpath package for being built, and avoid the "GPL vaccine" altogether, if you're looking for a solution.
That is what determines whether the binary package is a derivative work of the class library package.
Not according to the law, nor to the GNU GPL. Neither talks of "Java Binary compatibility". Sun does talk of it, in its documents, but as far as I can tell, Sun's JDK license is not the GPL, and has no relevancy to Debian's packaging of Java programs in main.
Please stop turning debian-legal into a pissing contest. Is SableVM so technically inferior that it must compete based on faulty political arguments rather than technical merit?
As far as I can tell, I did not start this discussion, and I only offered my opinion in two quite clear messages.
While I do lead the SableVM project effort, I do not control any of its contributors right of expression. If you have issues with Grzegorz, write to him, not to me.
As for your remarks on SableVM, I do believe that SableVM is superior in some aspects, and inferior in others. Each of these 2 efforts have their advantages and drawbacks. Kaffe has a long usage history, but SableVM has I think a cleaner internal structure (allowing for moving & precise collectors), etc. I am very pleased that Debian has chosen to package both of them. As I just said, I have not started this discussions, and, to put it mildly, I did not appreciate to be at the receiving end of personal attacks.
Once upon a time, there was a community known as the free software community, and it held as its goal the production of high-quality software rather than bickering over which free software license was better.
I simply stated an opinion on problems with license compatibility. I remember that KDE had such a discussions a while ago; was it because people didn't like KDE? I believe not. The goal is to avoid future legal problems which can cause quite a lot of harm to Free software projects. Do you think the FSF has put up a page on Free software licenses and their compatibility or not to the GNU GPL out of a need for bickering over other projects? I do not think so, but that is a personal opinion.
sablevm simply does not provide the java2-runtime virtual package that Eclipse otherwise requires. Is that all this is about?
Actually, I have filed a bug on the sablevm package to provide such a virtual package quite a while ago, see bug #238768. I know of other free JVMs (than SableVM) for which the GPL does not apply, for example:
- Wonka http://www.acunia.com/wonka/ - JikesRVM http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/jikesrvm/ So, I see no need for Debian to single out SableVM as the only alternative!
Kaffe will deliver Eclipse compatibility before SableVM, therefore SableVM must prevent Debian from delivering popular software that works with Kaffe?
As far as I can tell, SableVM does run Eclipse, so I don't what the contest would be about. (Maybe others have a clearer idea).
As far as I am concerned, if I see any request for help from Debian maintainers on sablevm mailing-lists, I will provide as much help as I can.
Regards, Etienne -- Etienne M. Gagnon, Ph.D. http://www.info2.uqam.ca/~egagnon/ SableVM: http://www.sablevm.org/ SableCC: http://www.sablecc.org/
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