Hello list,
I realise that this is not the forum for GPL discussion, but these mails
raise any issue which has had me wondering for a while. It seems to me
the GPL was composed with 3 things in mind.
(1) when you copy someone's code and change it
(2) when you link a C/C++ program into your executable (3) when you do
the same as 2 but with a .so dynamic library.
All these make sense because you have a single monolithic "program"
running in a certain way. There are a number of java features which
confuse this model.
One which confuses me is JINI.
A Jini application will broadcast to the net asking for a particular
service by its interface (in a Java sense). Any number of services can
respond and they return you an object which implements this interface.
It is important to realise that you then execute code which your program
may have never even "met" before, and there you have no way of
determining licensing issues before you run it.
Your application then proceeds to call the methods of the service object
(which clearly corresponds to calling functions of a dynamic link
library). So you are infected with GPL without even knowing about it,
in a certain sense. But does your client contain the service or does
the service contain you (or indeed does a 3rd party JVM contain both of
you and so the issue doesn;t apply!!!)?
OK enough waffle.
2Qs
(1) Does anyone know any more about GNUs own interpretation of
"containing" things with respect to advanced java features (and mobile
code in general)?
(2) I agree with Dan that EJBoss is not a part of my beans, but what if
I use BMP via calls to Jaws (I know I shouldn't) or use jnp as a general
JNDI provider for non EJB objects. Am I in danger?
Geoff
PS. By the way congrats to the jboss team, I have just started using it
and am very impressed with the project.
Dan OConnor wrote:
>
> On 10 May 00, at 18:34, Mats Lofkvist wrote:
>
> >
> > If you distribute a package consisting of jboss and a set of
> > proprietary beans, it should be even easier to argue that the GPL
> > applies to all of it.
> >
> > So imho the text on the web site should be changed to clearly
> > describe that jboss can _not_ be used with non-GPL'd beans.
> >
>
> Hi Mats,
>
> You bring up some interesting issues, but this last one isn't a
> close call. Your beans don't contain jBoss; jBoss contains your
> beans. Proprietary applications can run on Linux. Proprietary
> beans can run on jBoss. We need to make this absolutely clear to
> everyone, so we don't scare off our users.
>
> Hi users. You can run your non-GPL'd beans on jBoss. No matter
> what.
>
> This is absolutely consistent with the GPL, in my opinion. If
> someone ever convinced us it wasn't, we would need to add a new
> license (to the growing horde) that allowed for it. But again, I
> strongly believe this isn't necessary.
>
> An ejb server with a license so viral that it infected beans that were
> run on it would be of limited value, even to the open source
> community.
>
> -Dan
>
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