Andy Tripp wrote:
That seems to me like saying that both of these are "derived" from a
Honda:
a) A Honda engine in a non-Honda car
b) A non-Honda engine in a Honda car
I think neither a Honda engine in a non-Honda car
nor a Honda car with some other engine is "substantially derived" from
an original Honda.
The engine is just too big of a part of the car, and a VM is too big a
part of a JDK.
And I think there's just no "deriving" going on here anyway.
"Deriving" would be to modify something
from the original, not mix-and-match parts.
Hi Andy,
This is an interesting analogy.
I happen to know a lot of people who do EV conversions -- they are
recognizing the car companies aren't cooperating with our desire to have
electric vehicles, and some take the step to convert their car on their
own to electric drive. And that is essentially what you've described;
you start with a car, rip out the gas burning junk, and install clean
wonderful electric drive systems. And if you go to
http://www.evalbum.com you can see descriptions for hundreds of vehicles
people have done this with. Almost always they continue calling their
car a Honda or a Suburu or a Ford etc..
On the other hand, Solectria used to do similar conversions
commercially. They took regular cars and as a commercial operation
converted them to electric drive. They relabeled the cars with their
own branding.. but there are trademark issues involved.. The Solectria
Force was really a Chevy made vehicle, but Chevrolet probably would be
unwilling to grant them rights to use those brand names. This is
related to why the Iced Tea project has the name its using.
A car, after an EV conversion, the part the passengers sit in is the
same.. most of the vehicle operation remains the same as how GM or Ford
or whoever designed it. It's using the same steering, brakes, doors,
seats, mirrors, etc, just replacing the motor.
Getting back to your point...
I think that starting with OpenJDK code and modifying it by removing
parts and adding in other parts could be taken as derivation. That's
certainly our position, that swapping out a part like the VM is a
derivation.
I think it's a matter of ... ah ... percentages? Perhaps? Maybe it
could be described as a metric of 80% of the result is OpenJDK code then
it's substantiallly derived? 80% is a number I pulled out of the air,
but I think it demonstrates what I'm getting at.
- David Herron
