On Thu, 2006-07-13 at 15:29, Stephen Frost wrote:
> It's not the PostgreSQL project's problem, that's true, but it certainly
> becomes an issue for distributions. Java as a PL ends up being a pretty
> odd case.. If there isn't anything in the PL code itself which forces a
> dependency beyond gcj then it might be possible to distribute it. Also
> allowing the PL to use a different JVM shouldn't be a problem so long as
> nothing is distributed which depends on the alternate JVM. The GPL is
> all about distribution and so I'm not sure that it would actually be a
> problem for an end-user to use Sun's JVM with GPL'd Java code.
Now I'm completely confused... what GPL code ? Is PL/Java licensed under
the GPL ? Or what GPL code do you talk about ?
The PL/Java code is likely only dependent on the JVM specification,
which does not put any restriction on how you must license your code, so
PL/Java can be licensed in any way the author wants, including BSD.
The distribution part is also no problem as I see it, as only the build
tools are not BSD, and they are available for free (including the Sun
JDK) and they don't restrict what should be the license of the code you
compile. This can only be a problem for purists like GPL zealots or
perhaps debian, otherwise is not that hard to download and install the
SUN JDK on a build machine... you don't need to distribute the JDK, only
the runtime JVM, which you actually can do (including again the Sun
runtime). So I can't see problems again from the packager point of
view... except purists might put a separate pl/Java module in some
"non-free" repository given the dependency on some "non-free" runtime...
Cheers,
Csaba.
