[jdom-interest] Imcompatibility with GPL

[Michael Kay]

> 
> See
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-java.html
> 
> That's the lawyer you're talking about.

It's interesting to read that again. He claims that the "link" is
established by virtue of importing classes in a JAR file at compile time.
This would imply that if component A accesses component B via interfaces
defined in C, then there is no link between A and B, and A is not a
derivative work of B. For example, there is no link between a Saxon
application and Saxon if the application uses Saxon only via JAXP
interfaces.

But I can't see what he bases that on. The actual licence text makes no
serious attempt to define what it means by linking, so his guess is no
better than anyone else's.

But then I don't really care, because the Saxon licence (Mozilla) doesn't
use this crazy concept of linking at all. Saxon does in some sense "link" to
DOM, DOM4J, JDOM, and XOM, and I've never looked at their licenses to worry
about whether I might be infringing them, since I'm clearly using them in
the way they were intended to be used. But lawyers have too much time on
their hands.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/