>In no way is the choice of license intended to prevent aggregation
>with Tomcat, nor to the best of my knowledge does the board--or
>the jBoss community in general--currently believe that this is the
>result.
well unfortunately this is most likely due to a lack of understanding of
the GPL (coupled with the fact that your web pages makes some blatently
wrong statements in regard to GPL). The best advice you can get is to see a
qualified lawyer - or if that is too expensive email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (or
[EMAIL PROTECTED]). He will tell you what you are doing is wrong and why.
>This sort of opinion is not like source code; we can't compile
>it and see it run (or not). I'm sorry about that. But there it is.
No - but you can get a bunch of lawyers to go over it. This has been done a
number of times and at one stage the FSF actually had a lawyer on "staff" I
believe. Instead of using this existing knowledge you have decided to
reinterpret the GPL in a flawed way. It is not really anyones fault as the
GPL is extremely difficult to understand for most people and not all the
cases of GPL are stated explictly (but are a result of interpretation).
Plain fact of the matter is that you violate the GPL in a number of ways
and tomcat is just one minor example of such a violation. You may not care
that your actions threaten the GPL but as GPL is IP of FSF they have a
right to remove from you the ability to use their license.
There is at least one company I know of that distributes jBoss
(mycomponents.com) and you place them in treacherous waters. Again - you
may not care about this but you should at least make this company aware
that what you doing is illegal so they have the opportunity to not become
liable.
So all in all I really think the board (or whoever is major copyright
holders on code) seek legal adice from a good lawyer. They are expensive
(about $400AU an hour) but in the long run it is much less riskier. The
longer you leave it the more difficult it becomes (as more people become
copyright holders on jBoss) and the more expensive it can become.
Cheers,
Pete
*------------------------------------------------------*
| "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want |
| to test a man's character, give him power." |
| -Abraham Lincoln |
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