CORBA and the GPL (was Re: Can Java code EVER be GPLd, at all?)

[Richard Stallman]

It is possible to use CORBA to do something more or less equivalent
to linking, but it is somewhat more painful.  So the GPL will still
be effective, even though not 100%, even if CORBA is never considered
to make a combined program.

    The situation is practically the same in many Java programs, 

My understanding is that normal practice with Java is that programs
link together dynamically.  That is not analogous to CORBA.  Of
course, Java may have CORBA facilities or CORBA-like facilities.

    You might think it isn't a problem because, for efficiency purposes, 
    someone wouldn't ordinarily do this--but CORBA optimizes things quite 
    well when the target of a call and its caller are both inside the 
    same process. 

When they are in the same process, that makes it more like linking.

More generally, what you are discovering is that any definitive
criterion based solely on the mechanism of communication is likely to
give silly and arbitrary results.  That's why I don't advocate a
criterion of that kind.