-- Etienne M. Gagnon http://www.info.uqam.ca/~egagnon/ SableVM: http://www.sablevm.org/ SableCC: http://www.sablecc.org/
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 10:49:41 -0400 From: "Etienne M. Gagnon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:0.9.3) Gecko/20010819 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Bryce McKinlay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Sablepath packages available to download References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bryce McKinlay wrote: > Sounds cool. I'm sure we'd all be grateful if you would consider > migrating your build changes/improvements and directory layout cleanups > back into classpath at some point? I would like to do so, but the Classpath project has yet to accept my offer to contribute my modifications under my own Copyright (but identical license). Talking of license... Richard M. Stallman has confirmed to me that the Classpath (GNU+Excp) license is NOT a "copyleft" license. In other words: 1- One can download the Classpath 2- modify it locally 3- license the modifications under GPL+exp (locally, not obligation to re-distribute) 4- link the modified classpath with proprietary modules to create an executable 5- distribute/Sell the executable without distributing the sources of Classpath nor the modifications. In fact, there's even no obligation to disclose that Classpath was ever used. In other words, the current Classpath license is weaker than the BSD license (without adv. clause)! This contradicts clearly the motivation that lead to change Classpath's license from LGPL to GPL+Excep. When I and other had ask questions about the GPL+Excp. on this list, the reply was to say that it was equivalent to the LGPL, minor the "re-linking requirement". RMS confirms that this is not the case. I personally have trouble to license my code under a license that does not force a third party to redistribute the source code of "my contribution" along an executable derived from my work. I think most Classpath contributors share the same feelings. So, if you like my work, and you would like me to contribute directly to Classpath, please pressure your leaders for: 1- Accepting contributions without copyright assignment, and 2- Change the license to a "weak copyleft" license [LGPL + exception about re-linking requirement? or something along my earlier suggestions on the matter?]. Etienne -- Etienne M. Gagnon http://www.info.uqam.ca/~egagnon/ SableVM: http://www.sablevm.org/ SableCC: http://www.sablecc.org/
