Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
Raul Miller <moth@debian.org> wrote:
> > > Section 2 is about the restrictions which come into play when you
> > > build a modified form of Kaffe, which is not the case for Eclipse.
> > > Eclipse involves no modifications of Kaffe.
>
> On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 09:50:17PM -0500, Walter Landry wrote:
> > Debian modifies Kaffe and distributes Eclipse with it. If Debian did
> > not modify Kaffe, then this section would not be relevant.
>
> First: There is no such legal entity as "Debian" which is doing such
> things. "Debian" is a trademark of SPI, and there are people who use
> that trademark, but that's not the same thing.
You can replace "Debian" with "SPI" if it makes you feel better. I
feel that you are quibbling about unimportant matters.
> Second, when a volunteer who associates with the name "Debian" modifies
> Kaffe, he or she does not modify it to include Eclipse. So the
> distribution of Kaffe proceeds unhindered.
>
> Third, when a volunteer who associates with the name "Debian" distributes
> Eclipse, this is under the terms of the Eclipse license, and this does
> not in any way violate the Kaffe license.
>
> Of course, if someone modified Kaffe to incorporte Eclipse, that would be
> a problem. To my knowledge, no one has done so, no one plans to do so,
> and no one is seriously presenting this as an issue.
>
> In other words: even if your sentence were legally accurate (which it
> isn't, given the legal status of Debian), it would still be irrelevant.
The volunteers are agents of Debian.
> > > Once again, the only relations between Eclipse and Kaffe are "Eclipse
> > > is aggregated with Kaffe" and "Eclipse is run by Kaffe".
> >
> > And once again, you miss the point that Eclipse and Kaffe together
> > make a whole work.
>
> The make an aggregate work. However, this aggregate work is not the
> work which is made when Kaffe is modified.
Debian distributes a modified Kaffe and Eclipse together. Section 2
of the GPL does not care whether the modifications made to Kaffe are
for making Eclipse work better or not.
> > > In particular, you can't impost restrictions from Section 2 on cases
> > > where Sections 0 and 1 have already granted permissions. Not unless you
> > > want to make distribution under the GPL void (see Section 4 for why that
> > > is a requirement).
> >
> > Section 0 says that this license only affects copying and distribution,
> > which is what is going on here.
>
> Section 0, when taken by itself (as you're doing here), only requires
> the inclusion of appropriate copyright notices. So we're satisfying
> that aspect of section 0.
>
> > Section 1 gives permissions for distributing unmodified versions.
>
> Yes.
>
> > I am talking about distributing modified versions of Kaffe (which
> > Debian does).
>
> And we're satisfying the conditions required for the distribution
> of those modified versions. Those modified versions of Kaffe do not
> include Eclipse.
>
> There is an aggregate work which is also being distributed which includes
> both Kaffe and Eclipse, but the GPL allows that.
They are not an aggregate work, they are a whole work.
Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu
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