Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Måns Rullgård <mru@inprovide.com> wrote:
> Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu> 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.
> 
> The Gnus newsreader, running under Emacs, does precisely this, and has
> done so for many years.
> 
> > 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().
> 
> A while back, the general agreement seemed to be that this would be
> allowed.

I don't doubt you, but when was that?  It would be good to see
surrounding discussion.

> > In essence, why does using exec() suddenly break the chain, while a
> > linker or classloader does not?
> 
> I don't see an obvious difference, but the GPL FAQ does mention this
> distinction.

I think this is really the point of contention.  There is no good
reason to say that exec() is a magic boundary.  That is why I don't
see the difference between linking in the C sense and calling
libraries through an interpreter.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu