Re: FAQ for Apache Harmony

[Geir Magnusson Jr.]

On May 6, 2005, at 10:35 PM, Simon Kitching wrote:
On Fri, 2005-05-06 at 19:23 -0700, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
On Fri, 6 May 2005, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
How does SWT relate?
It really doesn't. I think of it as an extra-J2SE application API.
But there has been quite a bit of back and forth about SWT and  
Swing so this
seemed like a question someone might ask....

I think, to make it clear to the world that open source and  
adhering to
standards are not in conflict, SWT should not be a part of Harmony's
builds/releases until it is part of J2SE proper.  If SWT is  
offered to us
it should be (for now) a separate project.

Are there any legal implications for "extending" Java?
Yes
If I remember correctly, it was Microsoft's decision to include
additional features (esp. "delegates") in its Java implementation that
caused Sun to sue them.
Could be.  I lost the plot on that lawsuit a long time ago.
Would this new implementation be legally forbidden from  
implementing new
core features not present in the Sun specification? One of the *nice*
points of having a Free Java implementation is being able to  
improve on
things.
The implementation that said was compatible J2SE would have to  
conform to the specification.  This is open source - we can create an  
environment where we can have lots of VM technology, but what we  
claim is our J2SE implementation better be J2SE.  Anything else can't  
be called "Java".

Anyone can take our code and do what they wish with it.  It's the  
same for Geronimo - you can take the codebase, and do whatever you  
want.  It doesn't have to be J2EE, but you can't call it J2EE either.

Re SWT: I presume there would be no legal problem with "Harmony"
distributions bundling the SWT libraries with it (as these are not  
core
language modifications, and the classes are not in the java.* or  
javax.*
namespaces). However I would agree that there isn't much point in ever
doing so; the major benefit of having libs bundled is that application
developers can just *assume* the feature is present when coding.  
But as
Harmony is likely to be a minor player for at least a decade to come,
Thanks for the support... :)
that assumption couldn't be made by developers and therefore it  
doesn't
seem to bring any benefits for Harmony to bundle SWT or any such
"extension" libraries. Having SWT development hosted as  a separate
Apache project is another thing though - I would quite like to see  
that!

Indeed.  That might be very interesting.  Of course, we can just go  
over and do it at Eclipse if we really cared...

geir
Regards,
Simon
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Geir Magnusson Jr                                  +1-203-665-6437
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