> The GPL requires that any derived work be licensed under the GPL.
So what if a third party created a derived work of both Communicator
and Kaffe ... then what? Could you not do that yourself? As long as
you kept the source available, the result would be something that is
freely redistributable under both licenses. Is that possible? Would
that mean under the *restrictions* of both licenses? What would that
mean?
I'm thinking more and more that GPL is mostly good, but to a small extent
incredibly evil. I've only glanced at NPL and MPL, but they seem to be
flawed in terms of interoperability with other systems, as well.
Right now the licenses severely prevent people from integrating things
in a convenient manner. The licenses are stated in a way as to make
people think they serve the public good, but this is a case where they
clearly do not.
Am I right in thinking that being able to embed Kaffe (or Japhar or
any other VM) into Netscape would be in the public good?
> The GPL does have a clause that basically says it is legal to link GPL'd
> code with items than normally some with the operating system (such as the C
> library, or the code in system calls) even if that code is proprietary.
> That is why GPL'd apps can run as a subsystem on almost any machine.
You mean as a supersystem, no?
> Because Transvirtual plans to sell proprietary versions of
> Kaffe, they will probably either not accept any contributions to ensure
So the intention of GPL can only work if another group makes a separate
distribution and source repository to allow for improvements from people
other than Transvirtual, fracturing the development.
> their right to retain copyright, or adopt an FSF-like assignment policy.
I'm not sure what FSF-like assignment policy is. Do you mean making
other people agree to assign the copyright ownership to Transvirtual?
> Japhar is LGPL'd and so can be embedded in Mozilla.
Depending upon the nuances of NPL.
I would be incredibly happy if FSF and Netscape got together to make
it so their licenses were more interoperable. Especially in terms
of software that implement *interfaces*, such as libraries or APIs or
subsystems that are technically programs or could be used as a program but
would be much more efficient and useful if they could be run in-process.
We're beginning to be in a world where the terms "library" and "program"
are no longer the only significant concepts that should be dealt with.
FSF's LGPL even says that GPL was intended for small utility programs.
Is it maybe time to do something about that?
What if there was an OS that didn't have processes, only threads?
And it ran only Java? You could call any function in any object you get
a handle to, how do you license that? Can you allow code A to call code
B and vice versa?
Why am I so [perhaps irrationally?] frustrated at all of this?
Bah, nevermind. Please disregard any illogical stuff above.
Chris
