Re: SableVM/Kaffe pissing contest (Was: GPL and Copyright Law)

[Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>]

Etienne Gagnon writes:

> 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.

SableVM developers are the only ones who seem to believe this.  I am
not sure whether this is due to a misunderstanding of how Java works,
copyright law, or both.

To claim that the Eclipse binary code is a derivative of the Kaffe
class library, there _must_ be some copyrightable (creative) element
from Kaffe that exists in the Eclipse binary code.  Using the class
library to guide a mechanical transformation -- especially when the
parameters are fixed by a third party (Sun), by the Java platform APIs
-- does not cause derivative-ness.  What parts of the binary have
copyrightable elements from Kaffe?

(See also the posts from Andrew Suffield dated 03 Nov 2003, linked
elsewhere in the thread.  They were in response to you.)

Michael Poole