Can Java code EVER be GPLd, at all?

[David Starner]

On Sun, Nov 14, 1999 at 06:39:55PM -0800, Arandir wrote:
> Should anyone ever take a developer
> to court over the single line "#include <gpllib.h>", rest assured that the
> prosecution will lose.
Your faith in a legal system that will consistently rule in the way you think
right is impressive. Naive, but impressive. (Given the increasing legal
support of software licenses, I'm believe there's a good chance the prosecution
would win. I would also call the legal system a crapshot, but at least in
Vegas you know the odds.)

> The lack of hard lines is precisely why I won't use any GPL'd libraries with my
> own code. Even though I am clearly within the bounds of the law by doing so,
> there are many, many people who don't agree, and I don't have the funds to
> defend myself from spurious lawsuits.
And I guess ethics never came into mind, that the authors meant something
by their license, whether or not it can be upheld in a court of law.

There's a library out there licensed under a very liberal license (GNAT-modified
GPL), but with a request that it not be used for military or nuclear stuff. And
per that request, I wouldn't use that library for anything serious, because
I would want that request - which I strongly disagree with - to be a part of
my software. I guess you wouldn't understand, as they would have no grounds
for sueing me.

> You're playing with semantics here. Lawyers like to do this, but users do not.
> Every use of a library is "essential" from the perspective of that library.
And lawyers make the law. 

> Think on this: You have every freedom in the world to write Free Software that
> uses Microsoft's MFC, Borland's OWL, Rogue's Tools++, etc. 
Free software that can only be compiled with non-free libraries isn't all that 
free.

>But in the land of
> the Free, you are not free to write BSD applications that link to GPL libraries.
Right, providing we're talking the BSD license versus the XFree86 license.

> > So, in the java example, if you GPL your java library, and a commercial
> > company distributes a java program using it, then I would expect the GPL
> > to apply - even though the technicalities of linking differ from the C
> > case.
> 
> Why exactly would you call this condition "freedom"?
This is license-discuss, not gnu.misc.discuss. Flame bait is not helpful.

-- 
David Starner - dstarner98 at aasaa.ofe.org
I see no trend at all, except toward women playing mean and ugly 
sociopaths who are good at killing and who enjoy dark powers. Maybe 
it's just my friends?
	-- Dr. Kromm, on who plays what type of character in RPGs