"Laurent Bossavit" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > another problem is the fact that to implement the OJI interface,
> > you need to subclass netscape's NPL XPCOM stuff. This creates a
> > derivative work, which again must be places under the NPL. Now
> > you've got NPL and GPL licenses on different pieces of the same
> > distribution.
>
> What, is that XPCOM stuff proprietary ? If it is, then the "OpenJava"
> interface is not 'open' in any real sense. You can write a GPL'ed VM,
> such as Japhar, because the public interfaces to the Java Core API is
> placed in the public domain. (Not that Sun explicitly says so; but,
> although I'm not a lawyer, I strongly suspect that it is Sun's loudly
> stated intent in labelling Java as a 'standard' to make it so.) I
> would expect the same reasoning to apply to any public *interface*
> specified by Netscape.
It's not just an API. It's a bunch of C++ classes. To create any
XPCOM stuff, you have to derive your implementation from nsISupports,
which is NPL'ed.
xtoph
