Re: testing before a release

[Per Bothner]

Etienne M. Gagnon wrote:

> Nobody cared about the LGPL license for Classpath before the libgcj merge.

A number of people were concerned about the duplication of effort,
and LGPL has always been unacceptable for libgcj.

>  To solve the "linking" problem, they went with GPL + exception, but a 
> careful inspection of it tell you that it is a permission to reuse 
> contributed code without any sourc-code redistribution obkigation 
> (very good for companies [I could say names here] to make money $$$ 
> selling embedded stuff that was developped by others).

That is kind of the goal.  We (well, some of us) want GNU Java to be a 
competitive
alternative to proprietary Java, even for people doing proprietary 
embedded applications.
I will name a name:  RedHat (and before that Cygnus) has put a lot of 
development
time and money into GNU Java (GCJ, libgcj, gdb, Classpath), and they 
make a good
chunk of their money selling tools for embedded developers.  I really 
don't hope you
think it unfair for them to try to get some of that money back.

Note the GPL + exception is only a permission to "reuse contributed code 
without
any source-code redistribution obkigation" if you "link this library". 
If you take
contributed code and use it apart from the library, or if you modify the 
code in the
library, then the GPL applies.

   --Per Bothner