Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:10:59 -0500 (EST), Walter Landry
<wlandry@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> 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().
The exec() boundary is bogus. The interpreter waffle is bogus. The
LGPL exemption is bogus. The syscall exemption is bogus. The
Classpath exception is bogus. The entire claim that linking creates a
derivative work is bogus. A published functional interface is a
published functional interface.
The FSF would like it to work the way they say it works, and would
like to continue gerrymandering the boundary to suit their goals of
the day, which is the only way that I can describe cases like
Classpath. But in the decades since the FSF first assumed this
stance, US courts have gotten wise to attempts to abuse copyright
monopolies through a refusal to permit interoperation, and they will
apply them to free software just as impartially as they have to game
consoles, spreadsheets, and printer firmware.
Cheers,
- Michael
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