At 08:55 29/10/00 +0100, Rickard Öberg wrote:
>Jon Stevens wrote:
>>
>> on 10/28/2000 5:22 PM, "Peter Donald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> > Once RMS finds out
>> > about the project misusing the GPL he will start advocating all the GNU
>> > peopls stay away from it.
>>
>> Someone want to send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] recommending that RMS
>> take a look at how the GPL is being used within the JBoss project?
>
>I think that would be a good idea. While I understand Marc's frustration
>with these silly things, I also understand Jon and Peters position that
>it really doesn't care what *we* think. The license isn't for us. The
>license is for *other* people who want to help/use our code. And if
>*they* interpret things another way, then that's what counts. Sad but
>true.
I would say it matters little what either you or others think but instead
what matters is the law. As it stands now everyone who has partial
copyright on jBoss code is liable. Any buisness who adopts and tries to
deploy jBoss as a software vendor (rather than a service vendor) accepts
partial liability. Now the "interpretation" I have heard spouted here is
wrong. What you are doing now is illegal - no question about it.
If you can live with that - fine more power to you. However I feel it is
very very wrong to hoist the product onto people who don't know that what
you are doing is braking the law.
I don't know if you have saught legal council (thou if you have fire them
immediately) and to be honest I really don't care what you do. It would
have been nice to collaborate but I have since worked around what I would
have liked to use from jBoss - thou there is bound to be people who would
like to integrate with you so it may be worth it to aid them.
However the thing that I find really unacceptable is the vicious attack
against the integrity of the GPL. You undermine the tenets of it and you
de-value it. I consulted to a company a while back who wanted to "GPL"
their code. Like jBoss they did not want to limit themselves and wanted to
violate the GPL. Their reason for thinking they could do this ? Because a
project on the net did it. That is the real cost of your actions. Misusing
the GPL like you do is a crime and is considered to be *worse* than
proprietry software. It devalues what FSF and GNU has been working on for
so long.
>A license is a set of words. Words are just to communicate. If the one
>being communicated with do not understand, the set of words used to
>communicate are wrong, no matter how right they are.
In this case it is not the case - it is the one communicating that does not
understand. Simplified the GPL forces all code in the JVM to be GPL'ed with
3 exceptions. The exceptions being
* Dynamically generated code (because it does not make sense to GPL this)
* Code that is part of platform (covered by GPL clause 3)
* "Hosted" code.
Hosted code is a fuzzy term but it generally covers things like jBoss
"hosts" EJBs, tomcat "hosts" servlets etc. This has not been directly into
the GPL but is based on interpretations of lawyers who specialize in this
sort of thing.
Now you could try to claim that tomcat is "hosted" in jBoss but that would
never hold up in court.
Now just say your group annoyed someone who used your product - if a
developer happened to live in Australia (my home) they could be put in jail
for 10 years. I expect similar durations in other countries. Everyone who
contributes to jBoss is subject to this.
Now you may think that I am
a> lieing/mistaken or
b> a fanatic about some other license.
Well neither in both cases. IANAL but I have consulted a lawyer in regards
to another similar situation but I have dealt with a lot of siimlar
situations in past. For a recent example you can see the ant-dev mailing
list archives at jakarta.apache.org.
In regards to b> - be assured that I like the GPL. I used to GPL a lot of
code when I worked with c/c++ and I am going to try and convince whoever I
have to at Apache to make APL GPL compatable (currently one clause makes it
incompatable).
Cheers,
Pete
*------------------------------------------------------*
| "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want |
| to test a man's character, give him power." |
| -Abraham Lincoln |
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