Re: java.awt status LGPL -> GPL?

[Brian Jones]

Mark Wielaard <address@hidden> writes:

> Dear Paul,
> 
> On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 05:12:28PM -0800, Paul Fisher wrote:
> > 
> > Sorry for not going into great detail, but I have a plane to catch
> > (literally).  I'll comment more when I have some free time.
> 
> Please do when you have time.
> 
> I don't have a very good feeling about this and I hope you can take that
> bad feeling away. I don't mind if this is actually a good decission for
> the GNU project as a whole, but in that case I really have to see more
> explanation of why this is a good move. 

The decision was made by Richard Stallman.  Previous to that I tried
to press for changing the license to be more like the rest of GNU
Classpath.  This is what I've wanted and by popular vote is also what
many of the contributors wanted, but that view did not prevail.
Apparently things have settled a bit since I made that note concerning
the AWT and we can now update the web pages again.

Legally speaking, the number of contributors to our AWT in Classpath
is still quite low.  Aaron did most of the work with myself and
another contributing bits and pieces (ignoring the peers).  We have
the option of licensing and using our code in any way we'd like as
long as we supply the FSF with 30 days notice in writing (This is my
reading of the contributor agreement).  If someone would like to use
my code under the GPL + exception, then I am more than willing to
supply the FSF with a writing to that affect which should make it legal.

> I am very pessimistic about targeting our GPLed library against a
> free beer library from Sun. I don't think this will create more Free
> Software or cooperation between different free software projects at
> the moment. 

The GPL'd library will still support research interests but it will
probably not be of interest to certain types of users.  For one, can
you execute a proprietary Java GUI application using a GPL'd AWT?
Two, I would like to know how this plays with Red Hat's embedded
customers of GCJ for instance?  Is it the same there, that customers
buy a more appropriate license based on something similar to the
individual contributor agreement with the FSF?

Brian
-- 
Brian Jones <address@hidden>