[kaffe] Build system for kjc / external jars + Jetty/JSP success

[Dalibor Topic]

Hi Mark,

--- Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org> wrote:

> Are there any Debian developers on this list that know how to see what
> keeps a package from main (and in particular why Ant is kept out of main
> at the moment)?

They way I understand it, it's because the free java environments in main can't
run ant at all, or not too well, or the implications of running ASF licensed
software on a GPLd virtual machine are too weird ;). See
http://groups.google.de/groups?hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=20030506121010%24293b%40gated-at.bofh.it

So my uneducated guess would be that, if one day ant enters main by the ways of
gcj, gij, sablevm or something else in main, then it would be o.k. for kaffe to
use ant *running on another vm* to bootstrap itself for debian. What I find
amusing, is that the GPL is 'eating its own children' here ;) The overwhelming
success of a non-GPL-compatible-but-nevertheless-free-software application
creates all sorts of trouble for pure GPL software.

What's even funnier, in my opinion, is that debian package dependencies for ant
apparently list kaffe, see http://packages.debian.org/stable/devel/ant.html .
So debian distributes ant (let me stretch this a little ;) 'linked' with kaffe,
and thus may violate the GPL as they see it! Oh my god! ;)

On a side note, here is a link to a nice web page saying which package is
holding up some other package's entrance into testing.
http://bjorn.haxx.se/debian/ and for kaffe
http://bjorn.haxx.se/debian/testing.pl?package=kaffe ... quite interesting
stuff. We're a bit of a roadblock ;)

cheers,
dalibor topic

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