On 10 May 00, at 21:34, Mats Lofkvist wrote:
Hi Mats,
>
> The real problem isn't in running, since if an end user chooses to
> deploy proprietary beans on a GPL server, you can't use that as an
> argument that the bean developer should release source. But if the
> bean developer himself distributes an proprietary application using
> GPL'd code, he is in deep s**t imo.
This gets to the root issue, in my opinion. The bean developer isn't
really using any of our code. He or she could develop on Inprise,
Gemstone, Weblogic, Websphere, or Orion, and then deploy using
jBoss.
If the bean developer happens to distribute jBoss along with his or
her proprietary beans, this is clearly ok, right? We allow anyone to
redistribute jBoss.
If the bean developer distributes a proprietary application that
actually uses our code (e.g. a modified EJB container) then he or
she is in violation of the license unless those modifications to our
container are shared with the community.
We want any improvements to the EJB container to be shared with
everyone, whether jBoss is used as "library" code in that container,
or is the basis for that container. That's why we use GPL, in my
opinion. (Please keep in mind I wasn't around when the decision to
go GPL was made, although I do support it completely.)
You can consider an application to be beans+EJB container, if you
want. Just like you can consider an application to be
executable+operating system. But we don't, any more than the
Linux community does. The "Web App" is the beans. The "Web
OS" is the container.
Can you tell me where this metaphor with Linux breaks down? Or
if it doesn't, does Oracle have to open the code to its Linux port?
Anyway, I'm glad we're having this discussion. If you have these
concerns, I imagine other people do too. So we need to get them
worked out. Thanks for sharing them.
-Dan
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