Re: Contributing The SableVM Virtual Machine To The Harmony Project

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Hi Chris,

Chris Pickett wrote:
> The FSF website says that the Apache 2.0 license is not compatible with
> the GPL.  If that is the case, maybe it's better either to wait for
> GPLv3, which has a hope of resolving the conflict, or to dual-license
> SableVM under the LGPL-2.1 and ASL-2.0.

You're right!  I've been thinking hard about it, before making the
contribution proposal.  Here are my conclusions, so far.

The GNU Classpath (CP) library has a license which is compatible to the
Apache License 2.0 (AL2).  So, I see no big "immediate" problem in the
GPL incompatibility of the AL2.  SableVM could still link with GNU CP.

Now, if we were to license SableVM under a GPL+AL2 compatible license,
such as the BSD license, the Harmony project could integrate our code
into their repository.  Yet, any improvement made by the Harmony project
to SableVM would be licensed under the AL2.  We couldn't import back
such improvement without relicensing SableVM under the AL2.  So, there's
no big gain from choosing a BSD license.  On the other hand, I think
that there would be benefits for SableVM to be contributed to Harmony,
as we could share our efforts with other Harmony VM contributors to
merge our VMs (I think that JCVM and SableVM are close enough to
consider such a thing), instead of working on distinct VM projects.

As you say, the FSF is working hard to increasing the compatibility of
the GPL to other free software licenses.  So, I see no problem letting
the FSF solve the problem, and meanwhile, write VM code.

Chris, thanks for your feedback!

Etienne

-- 
Etienne M. Gagnon, Ph.D.            http://www.info2.uqam.ca/~egagnon/
SableVM:                                       http://www.sablevm.org/
SableCC:                                       http://www.sablecc.org/

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