[Kaffe] can the classpath project be used with Kaffe.

[Moses DeJong]

On 9 Feb 1999, Alexandre Oliva wrote:

> On Feb  9, 1999, Moses DeJong <dejong at cs.umn.edu> wrote:
> 
> > I was just reading up on the classpath project and it seem that they
> > are using the LGPL while Kaffe uses the GPL. Does this mean that classpath
> > code can not be used in the Kaffe project?

What exactly are you basing this statement on? I am no lawyer but my
impression of the GPL is that it does not allow any linking to code
that is not also covered under the GPL (or equivilant license).

<SNIP FROM GPL>
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program
into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library,
you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary
applications with the library. If this is what you want to do,
use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License. 
</SNIP FROM GPL>

> Nope, LGPL is compatible with GPL.
> 
> >  I am not advocating that Kaffe's java libs be replaced, I am just
> >  saying that it would be nice to be able to compare implementations
> >  of the java.* classes in classpath and Kaffe.
> 
> Certainly.  I, for one, would find it great.  There are certain parts
> of Classpath that are much more mature than Kaffe's.  Furthermore, I
> understand that Transvirtual cannot use code people contribute to the
> GPLed Kaffe in the custom edition (except code from people that have
> signed papers giving them explicit permission to do so), therefore
> adopting Classpath for the GPLed edition of Kaffe would be a step
> forward in terms of JDK-compatibility, because the Free Software
> community wouldn't be duplicating efforts.
> 
> But then, Tim and Peter might not like that move.  I'd appreciate to
> have input from them about this idea.


This also brings up another "license" question. It also seems like using
JNI to "link" to the Kaffe JVM with code that is not covered under the
GPL would not be allowed. In my case, I want add the Kaffe runtime to
an existing Tcl interp using JNI, but it would seem that this would
not be allowed under the terms of the GPL. Tcl is covered under a
"BSD like" free license. I checked the README for Kaffe but it does
not contain any "exceptions" to the GPL. I would think two common
exceptions that you would want to allow are "linking" to kaffe using
JNI and allowing people to run non GPLed .class file.


Mo DeJong
dejong at cs.umn.edu