Folks,
Well this is one for all the lists and if some of you are on all of them
then you will get this message quite a bit.
So we took into account your remarks and modified the license.
The modification is a "preface" just like Linux has.
It addresses 2 key points.
1- It spells precisely the scope of the license and its "virality". As
a "NOTE" we specifically say that "normal usage" does not imply GPL
propagation. In the case of J2EE based system, the scope of "normal
usage" is even simpler to grasp as it is limited to the J2EE APIs. In
clear beans and applications that use the jBoss products through the
J2EE API fall under the normal usage category and not the "derivative
products" which are infected by the GPL.
The "import rule" is still valid in the sense that if you import jboss
code then you are infected by the GPL if you don't import jboss code but
J2EE code then you are not infected. However the "use" definition is a
bit larger as it covers the case of reflexive calls (that bypass the
import) on jBoss. So that folks can't create a "technical loophole" by
using the reflection package. However the "rule of import" is still
valid and should guide your development on top of GPL code in jBoss.
2- It includes a copyright notice. We are not Linus Torvalds, so we
copyright for the "authors" of the code. I.e. the list of authors in
the AUTHORS file.
In this fashion, the GPL is completely non-equivoque.
Alright onto the text:
<prepend>
NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use container
services through J2EE (TM) defined standard calls - this is merely
considered normal use of the container, and does *not* fall under the
heading of "derived work".
</prepend>
