Wonka

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 25, 2001 at 09:30:34AM +0200, Chris Gray wrote:
> 
> I would also invite people to look at ACUNIA's Wonka VM,
> <URL:http://wonka.acunia.com>.  Like IBM, we already developed our
> own class libraries, but a Classpath/Wonka hybrid would appear to be
> feasible from both a legal and a technical point of view.  Of more
> practical value (probably) would be a gcj-Wonka synthesis.

Nice. From you package report page I get the impression that you have
a lot of classes for 1.1 and 1.2. But it does not seem as complete as
Classpath at the moment. But you have a working AWT implementation!
And some javax.crypto stuff. Cool.

Was there a reason you could not use (or cooperate with) GNU Classpath
for your VM?

Two legal nitpicks. (Please ignore them if you don't like legal issues.)
Your license is not GPL compatible (which may or may not be a problem).
The GPL incompatability come from clause 4:
4. Products derived from this software may not be called "Wonka",
   nor may "Wonka" appear in their name, without prior written
   permission of ACUNIA NV.
This is the same as can be found in the Apache license which is also not
GPL compatible since it is an added restriction (although a minor one)
according to GPL clause 6. But since you actaully have a trademark on Wonka
this clause is not necessary. You could replace it with a fact (outside the
actual license text) such as "The following are trademarks of Acunia, XXX,
YYY, ZZZ. This license does not grand you any permission to use any
trademarks of Acunia when distributing derived works." That way it would
be GPL compatible (since then your claim is based on trademark law and not
on copyright laa)w. You might want to take a look at how AbiSource did a
similar thing with their trademark on AbiWord.

Your download does contain a COPYING file with the same clauses as menioned
on <http://wonka.acunia.com/licence.html>. But all source files and
documentation comes with a header that does not sound very open/free.
It would be nice to make it a bit more clear that the license agreement
mentioned in that text is acutally the top level COPYING file. Note for
example that all Classpath files explicitly state the license conditions.
This makes it much more clear what your rights are if you somehow only
received part of the code archive.

Groetjes,

Mark
-- 
Stuff to read:
    <http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html>
  What's Wrong with Copy Protection, by John Gilmore