Re: Questions about the Classpath license exception

[Leo Simons]

> On 5/14/05, Leo Simons <address@hidden> wrote:
>> (Harmony people: replies only on the classpath mailing list please, this has
>> in reality only little to do with harmony.)

I really hate crossposts. Oh well.

On 15-05-2005 01:39, "Davanum Srinivas" <address@hidden> wrote:
> We can use the con call next week as the forum.

I doubt that's going to be very productive. I want stuff on paper (well,
written words) to e-mail to various people and get feedback on. Otherwise we
get stuck in vagueness.

> Just to summarize *Ideally* what we would like, here's a list:

I think that's not an exhaustive list. I'm a bit afraid of bulleted lists
like this since they're somewhat simplifying complex stuff. I think we would
like (quoting myself)

"a different kind of wording [of the GPL+Exception statements] which is
compatible with [the goals of the classpath people], Apache's goals with
Harmony, and the Apache License"

"Apache's goals with harmony" is something like "creating a J2SE
implementation which is effectively under about the same set of rules as
those spelled out in the Apache License". IIUC (IANAL!) that means that the
classpath code has to be under a license that is "less restrictive" or "just
as restrictive" as the apache license, but not "more restrictive". However,
there's some "wiggle room" where Apache might want to "swallow" some of
those goals in the interest of cooperation.

But before we can start discussing any of that...

> On 5/14/05, Leo Simons <address@hidden> wrote:
>> The first thing we would like to do is get rid of all those question marks.
>> It's probably not productive to go through all of them. One suggestion I'd
>> like to pass on is that you guys write up a list of the goals to be achieved
>> with the GPL+exception construct. (...)

I somewhat doubt that the goal with classpath licensing is simply "be
compatible with the GPL, be compatible with the AL, be compatible with the
MPL", since that's then a really short and simple license (MIT license would
do for example).

Now, I think we're all reasonably clear on what the goals of the GPL are
(redistribution-oriented copyleft, blah blah) and that's pretty
well-documented elsewhere, so for starters we "just" need a delta between
the license goals of the GPL and the license goals for classpath. Without
all those question marks :-)

Cheers!

Leo