Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
Raul Miller writes:
> On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 07:08:23PM +0100, Måns Rullgård wrote:
> > It is also legal to sell all the ingredients for a bomb, along with
> > instructions needed to build one. However, building and using the
> > bomb is most likely illegal.
>
> As a general rule, bombs are not copyrighted works.
The DFSG supposedly allow users to use Debian-distributed software in
any way they wish. The theme of this thread seems to be that some
people believe run-time linking of an application against a GPLed
library, when there are other implementations of the library API,
makes the application a derivative of the library.
It seems to me that if we indicate the application should link against
a GPLed library because the other implementations do not fit our
definition of free software, that packaging policy decision should
have no impact on copyright issues: The decision is made by Debian
for reasons unrelated to any copyright-protected actions.
If you think copyright law (case, statutory, common or civil) supports
the claim that the application is GPL-entangled, please say so and
provide citations. Comments like "bombs are not copyrighted works" do
not add anything useful to the discussion.
Michael Poole
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