At 09:45 30/10/00 +0100, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Peter Donald wrote:
>> >1) jBoss cannot include the Tomcat code and distribute
>> > the combination without breaking the APL license of
>> > Tomcat.
>>
>> Nope APL doesn't care. It brakes the GPL if tomcat is included. Tomcat can
>> virtually not be in the same VM or else you are breaking the GPL.
>
>Maybe I was not quite clear here. What I mean is:
>If jBoss includes code from Tomcat, the GPL license
>of jBoss _requires_ that the Tomcat code _must_ be
>put under GPL, but the APL license does not allow
>that. Maybe it would be more correct to speak of
>a license conflict here.
>Would you agree to that?
yep.
>Please note that section 0 of the GPL clearly states
>that activities other than copying, distribution and
>modification are outside the scope of the GPL.
>So GPL cannot make restrictions on what a user does
>when he does not copy, distribute or modify.
>I do not think that loading Tomcat into a VM that
>has jBoss loaded come under any of these three terms.
but the code to do the loading will.
>> 3 is violated all the way through jBoss with JAAS, JTA, (EJB ?), JMX,
(JMS?)
>
>Yes. I agree that we must get rid of the violations.
the question I ask is - Is it possible ? Considering you are writing an EJB
server and EJB package is a violation I would say - no it is not possible
with vanilla GPL. You may be able to modify it to come to acceptable terms
thou that means having a lot of knowledge about legalities or using a
canned modification (as given by GNU).
The reason is that you can not arbitrarly modify the GPL because GNU does
not give you permission - and they own the license (ie it is not a public
domain license).
>> The implications are that anyone who distributes jBoss is accepting a
>> liability and can be sued for damages and for a creating a license
>> inconsistent with what they distribute. Damages is hardly likely to be a
>> problem as it is opensource dev and very few people are likely to be
>> directly representing their company and thus no company would go after
>> them. Inconsistent license is a big problem in many places (Australia and
>> and some states in America are good examples of such places) and can cause
>> a lot of pain.
>
>IANAL and I don't know the law everywhere, but I would
>be very surprised if someone could be sued for damages
>with respect to copyright unless liability (culpa) is
>shown. And sections 11 and 12 of the GPL makes it
>_very_ hard to show liability.
That is not what you get gotten for. You can disclaim all works (like in
those sections) but you can not disclaim the license terms. You would in
effect have to write another license to get liability and then of course
that one could be attacked. To work this you would thus need to issue an
infinite number of licenses where each one disclaims liability for next
one. As this is clearly not possible you will be held responsible for
providing and invalid license (and any damages that result of such action).
ie. if a mycomponents.com customer got burned because they thought they
were dealing with GPL code (when they aren't) then they could turn around
and sue mycomponents.com for both damages and the bad license.
mycomponents.com could then inturn turn around and sue copyright owners of
jBoss. Chances of it happening are minimal unless jBoss becomes very
popular (at which point chance increases dramatically) but it is not really
worth the risk IMHO.
>
>
>Best Regards,
>
>Ole Husgaard.
>
Cheers,
Pete
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