Chris Dailey wrote:
> 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
Anyone can combine the two. They just cannot distribute the results. The
licenses are not compatible.
> 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?
It would be good for Mozilla to have Java support. Japhar should fill that
need nicely.
> > 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?
I was referring to subsystems to mean things like the printing subsystem,
the batch scheduling subsystem, etc. A GPL'd lpr could run on any OS.
> > 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.
No. The only reason for this is so that Transvirtual would have the right
to release non-GPL version of Kaffe. If other people had copyright in part
of it, Transvirtual would need to get permission from all of them before
using a non-GPL license. For "normal" GPL'd apps which no one intends to
license as proprietary software, this type of thing is not an obstacle.
> > 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?
Yes. Or licensing Transvirtual to use it in a proprietary release.
--
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* Aaron M. Renn *
* Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Homepage: <URL:http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/> *
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