Re: Licensing issues (Java/OpenGL-based graphics package for octave)

[Michael Goffioul]

On 4/26/07, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> I was trying to see what was needed to run this on a Debian system and
> looked at the JOGL license which is claimed to be "BSD" but includes
> the clause
>
>   You acknowledge that this software is not designed or intended for use
>   in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear
>   facility.
>
> This extra condition would make it incompatible with the GPL and would
> cause trouble if JOGL is linked with Octave (even indirectly).  So how
> is JOGL used here?  When Octave uses Java with your interface, how is
> that managed?  Is Octave linked with the Java runtime environment?
> Is the JRE linked with JOGL?  If yes to both, then the result is that
> all of these things are linked together and that clause causes
> trouble.

Quite difficult to answer... Here's more or less how it works:
- the java interface is linked against Octave (of course)
- the java interface is not linked against with JRE, but loads it
(jvm.dll) dynamically (like a "dlopen")
- the JVM loads the Java classes (bytecode) on-demand, including JOGL
It's unclear to me how this impacts Octave from a license point of view.

Michael.