Re: AWT licensing

[Etienne M. Gagnon]

Hi Mark,

Here's the clarified Classpath/LibGCJ exception text that RMS agreed to:

See:
 http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/classpath/2001-November/001649.html
and
 http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/classpath/2001-December/001685.html

--- BEGIN ---

As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you
permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an
executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent
modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under
terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked
independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that
module.  An independent module is a module which is not derived or
based on this library.  If you modify this library, you may extend
this exception to your version of the library, but you are not
obligated to do so.  If you do not wish to do so, delete this
exception statement from your version.

--- END ---

For those of the Classpath and LibGCJ lists that didn't follow the
earlier discussion about this, the idea is that the current Classpath
exception text is ambiguous.

For the curious, this ambiguity is explained in the message:
  http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/classpath/2001-November/001606.html

The proposed text, above, carries the exact same intentions as the
current Classpath exception, but is much clearer about the following
things:

1- The imprecise "we" is replaced by "the copyright holders",

2- Permission to optionally extend (or not) the exception to
derivative work is explicitly given, and

3- Clarification is made to explicitly state that this exception
applies to Classpath (the library) itself and does not relieve the
licensee from his obligation under the license of linked independent
modules.  So, if you link Classpath with Readline, this exception does
not relieve you from the obligation (under the license of Readline) to
apply the GPL with no exception to the combined work.

So, here's the proposed complete Classpath/LibGCJ copyright notice.
You will note an explicit statement about our stand on linking
("Linking this... combination.").  While this statement is "optional",
it clarifies any potential ambiguity for those who intend to
circumvent the intent of the GPL through dynamic linking.

--- BEGIN ---

Classpath, a set of essential libraries for supporting the Java
language.
Copyright (C) 1998-2002, Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this library in the file "COPYING".  If not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307 USA.

Linking this library statically or dynamically with other modules is
making a combined work based on this library.  Thus, the terms and
conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole
combination.

As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you
permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an
executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent
modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under
terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked
independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that
module.  An independent module is a module which is not derived or
based on this library.  If you modify this library, you may extend
this exception to your version of the library, but you are not
obligated to do so.  If you do not wish to do so, delete this
exception statement from your version.

--- END ---

So, to repeat myself, I propose to take advantage of the AWT license
change and, unless somebody has some kind of objection, I suggest to
also go ahead and change the exception text; this way all license
related discussions will be definitely be closed.

Thanks,

Etienne

On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 05:28:58PM +0100, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, 2002-01-13 at 17:02, Etienne M. Gagnon wrote:
> > As you have probably noticed, Richard Stallman agreed to my proposed
> > clarification to the GPL exception text.  Unless somebody has some
> > kind of objection, I would suggest to also go ahead and change the
> > exception text, this way all license related discussions will be
> > definitely be closed. :-)
> 
> Yeah, I agree that it would be nice to close the book on all these
> license discussions. And doing it now also means that we won't cause any
> more license change confusion in the future when we do a new release.
> 
> Could you post the exact wording again (I lost the thread and I know
> that you made at least two proposals and RMS didn't quote it). And could
> you please also CC it to address@hidden so the libgcj people can take
> a look at it (GNU Classpath and libgcj are officially merged projects
> even though we still need to do a lot of merging).
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mark
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Classpath mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/classpath

-- 
Etienne M. Gagnon                    http://www.info.uqam.ca/~egagnon/
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