kaffe OpenVM, GPL, and commercial use?

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Dec 23, 1998, chanders at timing.com (Craig Anderson) wrote:

> How does the GPL of Kaffe OpenVM affect the use
> of Kaffe OpenVM for a commercial application?

The fact that Kaffe OpenVM is GPLed doesn't affect its ability to run
non-GPLed applications.  The fact that its implementation of the Java
API is GPLed means that you can't distribute applications linked with
it.  However, since Java is totally dynamically linked, it doesn't
make much sense to restrict distribution of classes linked with one
another, particularly with classes of the Core API, because you could
easily argue that your application was built using another Java VM.

Anyway, I think the license of Kaffe should be ammended with a note
like the one in libstdc++ or such, meaning that the Kaffe classes, by
themselves, don't force your program to be GPLed too in order for it
to be distributed.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva  aoliva@{acm.org}
oliva@{dcc.unicamp.br,gnu.org,egcs.cygnus.com,samba.org}
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, SP, Brasil