On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 22:11:52 +0100, Dalibor Topic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Michael K. Edwards wrote: > > [Regarding the compatibility of a GPL JVM with Java code under other > > licenses; cross-posted from debian-java to debian-legal] > > [cut noise about FSF]
One person's signal is another's noise; but that wasn't mostly about the FSF, except insofar as it is the FSF's stance that seems to have persuaded so many people to an opinion I believe to be unsupported by relevant law. > > But if the Kaffe copyright holders interpret the relationship between > > Java bytecode and GPL code to be loose enough not to create a > > derivative work, I think they have at least US case law behind them. > > The relationship between GPL, interpreters and bytecode has been > rehashed here already before (with the same participants, old hat, and > all that ;): > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/11/msg00010.html > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/11/msg00026.html Thanks for the references; I'll read them over. My first impression is that mechanical translation of bytecode to some other form of instruction stream doesn't create an original work of authorship and therefore doesn't create a derivative work, any more than rendering the Postscript of an ordinary document to a PDF creates a derivative work (it's the same "work" -- expressive content -- in a different physical format). So the GPL has nothing to say about running Eclipse on Kaffe's VM on that basis, either. > As you can see, bytecode does not necessarily make the relationship > looser. Nevertheless, the claim that is made by a particular developer > of a 'competing' VM project on debian-java about running Eclipse on > Kaffe being illegal, is wrong, in my non-lawyerish opinion, because > Eclipse's source code or bytecode does not derive specifically from > Kaffe's interpreter or class library, afaik, but uses 'standard' Java > APIs all the way. Just as explained above in the links. APIs, to the extent that they are functional and not expressive, aren't copyrightable anyway. I don't think I've ever seen a case where functional use of, say, C headers -- let alone of compiled code -- was found to infringe copyright, as opposed to some term of a valid license contract. Does anyone know of case law to the contrary? Cheers, - Michael
