Hi,
Aaron Mulder wrote:
>
> Marc,
> First, you seemed to be thinking I was replying to you, but in
> fact I was replying to someone else so I did not in fact put words in your
> mouth.
> Second, here's a quote from the GPL from
> http://www.gnu.org./copyleft/gpl.html
>
> "These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable
> sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be
> reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then
> this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you
> distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same
> sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the
> distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose
> permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to
> each and every part regardless of who wrote it."
>
> So, I would consider Tomcat, JMX, Castor, etc. to be "reasonably
> considered independent and separate works".
Yes.
> However, I would also say
> that if you put together a J2EE server including Tomcat, JMX, Castor, and
> jBoss, then they are "part of a whole which is a work based on the
> Program". Do you disagree?
May sound like a fight over the meaning of words, but: This depends on
the meaning of "part of a whole".
Please note that we can have "distributed with" without this implying
"distributed as part of a whole". For example, RedHat makes a CD with
the GPLed Linux kernel and a proprietary license Metroworks X11 on the
same disk.
This distinction is important, otherwise one could reason: Linux kernel
is part of the world, Linux kernel is GPL, Solaris kernel is also part
of the world, so Solaris must be under GPL.
If Tomcat, JMX, Castor and jBoss were all linked into the same executable
it would be very hard to argue against the "part of a whole" argument.
Fortunately they are not. If the class files were placed in the same jar,
it would also be hard to argue.
But (please correct me if I am wrong) Tomcat, JMX, Castor and ejb.jar are
in completely seperate jars, and these jars have not been modified in
any way. Thus I would argue that we have "distributed with" but not
"distributed as part of a whole".
> So I think it's important that we don't give any indication that
> Tomcat, JMX, Castor, etc. are distributed as "part of jBoss".
Yes. They may be distributed with jBoss, but not as part of jBoss.
> I think
> including JMX in a jBoss download is a flagrant violation of that.
I dont think so due to the argument above. JMX and ejb.jar is _not_
put under GPL by distributing it with jBoss as long as we do not say it
a part of jboss.
But there might be other problems if the copyright holders for these
jars demand that we no longer redistribute them. The ejb.jar file is
relatively simple, so I think a freeware version would pop up within
48 hours if this could no longer be distributed. Don't know about JMX,
but if Telkel has contributed code to it, the I would guess that the
copyright holder might get other problems if they want to stop
redistribution with jBoss.
> I
> think if we put code in the jBoss core that imports Tomcat classes, then
> it's pretty indefensible even if I agree that they are still conceptually
> separate products.
Using Tomcat does not put Tomcat under GPL, but it could put jBoss
under the license of Tomcat if that license is infective.
But if the Tomcat license is non-infective, it doesn't even matter
if jBoss should become completely dependent on Tomcat. jBoss license
would still be GPL.
An example: I once wrote a GPLed network driver that _only_ worked
in a LGPLed networking framework. LGPL is non-infective, so even
though my driver cannot run at all without this LGPLed networking
framework my driver is still GPL.
Best Regards,
Ole Husgaard.
