I have read through the license more thoroughly this time. I must admit RMS
is right about some of this stuff. The license restricts us specifically in
three ways:
1. You may only see the specification if you sign the license, and you may
not show it to anyone until they sign it.
2. You may *not* use Jini itself as a "reference implementation," i.e. no
reverse engineering whatsoever.
3. *Extensions to the API* must be released under the Jini contract, a
near-impossible legal stance to take.
Royalties and, indeed, most of the license, applies only to distributions
based on Sun's source code, and thus do not affect us. However, the license
is incomplete, and in particular their reference to the word Original Code
may mean Sun's source code *or* others' source code implementing JINI. So
we must wait to be sure of that. It would be dubious legal ground to stand
on, which is why I do not choose that interpretation right now.
I don't care *what* their license is, or whether it's free software, as long
as we can replicate JINI if we wish to. The license is not restrictive
enough to stop a cleanroom implementation from occurring, but it makes it
much harder and more fraught with legal peril. Sun is a company, first and
foremost. They are capitalistic. They do *not* give away their property
entirely to the public, as RMS seems to desire.
We *can* create a cleanroom implementation if we wish, we just have to abide
by the above restrictions.
--John Keiser
