[kaffe] using ant to build kaffe - ant needs non-free java!

[Jim Pick]

> Are there any legal problems with it?
> FWIK kaffe uses BSD-like license - or at least what I have
> in ./debian/copyright looks similar.
> I asked seriously.

It's GPL'd.  It used to be under a BSD-like license, but that was
many years ago.
 
> Lately I was thinking about your qt-awt GPL imlementation as
> of a thing that will probably not be used too widely (unfortunatelly)
> because of the license - which is incompatible even with some
> DFSG-free [1] licenses (let alone non-free ones), like AFAIR
> Apache license (which covers a lot of free-java stuff).

Yeah, it's a bit of a problem - even free DFSG-free licenses don't mix
so well.
 
> Is there any chance to ask the authors to relicense it under
> something less restrictive (at least Apache-compatible)?
> [2]

I think we'll have trouble getting the OK from Transvirtual to do
any relicensing, since it was officially shut down on the 31st, and
won't really exist anymore - we'd have to convince it's investors and
creditors or whoever buys the remaining intellectual property of the
value of a license change.  I don't really think it's worth the effort.

I'm going to take the interpretation that the things that are outside
the core of kaffe, eg. programs and class libraries, aren't really a
part of the JVM, and so I'm not going to worry too much about the
license compatibility issues.  When things get broken up to be a bit
more modular, it should be a bit clearer, since the VM bits will live in
a module by themselves.

Cheers,

 - Jim