Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe

[Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>]

Walter Landry writes:

> What if there was a package wget++ that communicated with openssl
> entirely through system() or exec() calls?  It would construct
> appropriate input and parse openssl's output.  Would that constitute
> linking?  It ends up using all of the same code as the directly linked
> version.
> 
> If it is not linking, why couldn't you do this with all GPL'd
> libraries?  You could write a GPL'd wrapper around a library, and just
> use the wrapper with exec().
> 
> In essence, why does using exec() suddenly break the chain, while a
> linker or classloader does not?

exec() does not break the chain of derivation.  My understanding is
that the Objective C front-end for gcc was released as free software
because the (corporate) author's attempted exec()-based abstraction
around the gcc back-end did not break the chain.  Rather than fight it
out in court, that company decided to make it free.

>From the law's perspective, the intent and result (in terms of
copyrightable expression) are far more important than the mechanism
through which software works.  That is why rules about static linking
versus dynamic linking versus I/O streams versus other IPC can only be
rules of thumb.  They can hint at the type of relationship, but do not
determine it.

Michael Poole