Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 12:52:29PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> writes:
>
> > As has been settled on this list, Eclipse is not a derivative of Kaffe
> > and does not contain any copyright-protected portion of Kaffe. It is
> > possible to claim that "Eclipse+Kaffe" is a work based on Kaffe, but
> > by the same argument, "Debian" is a work based on Kaffe, and the
> > rational interpretation is that both cases are mere aggregation.
>
> It seems to me that "mere aggregation" must be the smallest idea that
> is still aggregation. For example, Emacs and Vim are merely
> aggregated in Debian. wget and openssl are not merely aggregated,
> because there's more going on there. It's not necessary to look in
> great detail at what *is* going on there -- it's enough to say that
> there is more there, so it's not merely aggregation. It's aggregation
> and something else.
wget and openssl are linked, openssl is a build depend of wget, it is
very much required to compile it. So, yes, it is not mere aggregation.
> I think it *is* legal to distribute a GPL-incompatible thing relying
> on GNU readline, as long as you aren't distributing readline with it.
>
> Similarly, Kaffe and Eclipse will be more than merely aggregated.
> It's certainly legal to distribute them separately, but when
> distributing them together the restrictions of GPL 2b come into play,
> unless it can be shown that they are merely aggregated.
>
> Since there is a stronger relationship there than the weakest relation
> that could be called aggregation, it isn't mere aggregation. It's
> aggregation and something else. Thus, GPL 2b applies.
It's mere aggregation, neither are linked against the other. Neither
build depend on the other, as far as I know, and even if they did, the
Java byte code that comes out the other end is *not* a derivative work
of Kaffe, it is merely data. The Java classes are not *linked* to Kaffe,
they may later be intepreted by Kaffe, but that's not neccessarily the
case. Infact, any Java SDK with enough of the specification implemented
could compile those Java classes, and I'd not be at all suprised if the
output of the different Java SDKs was incredibably similiar.
So, in effect, the *only* thing that Kaffe is doing, in relation to
Eclipse, is providing the JVM to run eclipse in, so it's just data,
mere, unadulterated data. As I believe has been said here several times
already.
I'm getting really bored of the thread going round in these circles
now... can we just put eclipse in main and have done with it already?
Thanks,
--
Brett Parker
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