Re: GPL and Copyright Law

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Dalibor Topic <robilad@kaffe.org> wrote:
> Etienne Gagnon wrote:
> > Dalibor Topic wrote:
> > 
> >> Thank you Etienne, but since you are not a copyright holder on either 
> >> Eclipse or any GPLd, copyrightable part of Kaffe, your opinions on how 
> >> GPL applies to Kaffe are ... well ... irrelevant.
> > 
> > 
> > So, according to such reasoning, you own opinion is irrelevant to the 
> > huge parts of Kaffe for which you, Dalibor, are not a copyright holder.
> > 
> > Now, more to the point, I do express my opinion as a Debian project 
> > contributor, (in NMU queue), an maintainer of a Java package (sablecc).
> > 
> > As far as I can tell, I do have the freedom to express my opinion.  Of 
> > course, you have the freedom of ignoring it, but it is up to 
> > debian-legal to decide whether they care or not about my opinion, not up 
> > to you.
> 
> I'm sorry about the personal attack. What I meant to say is:
> 
> You are entitled to interpret the GPL in any way suits you, and that's 
> fine. You're also entitled to share your opinion with the whole world as 
> well. You do so, regularly, and have set up a web site to put your 
> interpretation of Kaffe's license out in the world, which is fine, too.
> 
> But as you interpret Kaffe's license more restrictively than its 
> authors, it has to be noted that you are not an author. So you are not 
> in a position to impose your non-DFSG-free interpretation of the GPL on 
> recepients and distributors of Kaffe, fortunately.

Is it possible to get all of the Kaffe authors to agree to either an
explicit linking exemption or to the interpretation of the GPL given
in

  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL

Either way would solve this particular problem.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu