Re: Classpath future?

[Etienne M. Gagnon]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 11:36:37AM -0400, Stuart Ballard wrote:
> I think at the time it was Cygnus, not Red Hat (I didn't think the
> acquisition had gone through by then?) Cygnus have always been pretty
> committed to free software and the GPL, and embedded systems were
> *really* important to their business model. So it's fair to assume that
> they had considered the issue fairly thoroughly. See below for my
> (outsider's) understanding of their position, though.

My point is that "embedded systems" are key to Cygnus/RedHat's businessi
model, not to me.

If I understand correctly (see below), the GPL+Exception was made to allow
linking with non-free code in the embedded system.  Allowing Cygnus/RedHat
to link non-free code with my contributions in embedded systems is not key
to "my" business model.

> As I understand it, the LGPL requires providing a dynamically-linked
> version of your executable and a facility for the end-user to later
> download new versions of the LGPL-covered code to this executable later.
> For people who want to use their JVM in a microwave, this does indeed
> seem unreasonable :)

The exception allows you to distribute the executable "without any
restriction", which means among other things, without "distributing the
source code".  Yes, you have to license your modifications under the
GPL(+exception), but the GPL does not require publication of these
modifications, unless you want to distribute the result.  But, the exception
allows you not to redistribute this source code!  So, were're now providing
code under a license wich allows redistribution of derived work in 
executable form, without distributing the source code to the original
work, nor the modifications.  That's looks pretty much like putting the code
under the BSD/public domain to me.  Maybe my interpretation is wrong...

As for the LGPL, Allowing dynamic linking is only required if you link 
with non-free code.  If your system only builds on Free software, you
won't have any problem with the LGPL.  This is not a problem to me...

Etienne
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| ?tienne M. Gagnon                    mailto:address@hidden |
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| Etienne M. Gagnon                    mailto:address@hidden |
| Assistant Professor                Phone: (514) 987-3000 ext. 8215 |
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| Department of Computer Science, UQAM      http://www.info.uqam.ca/ |
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