Yes, shareware. That is, Javadoc JARs allow you to share your documentation without sharing your sources. AFAIK, almost all modern IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans, IDEA) prioritize displaying documentation from source JARs, if available. Since ASF makes it obligatory to share sources, I see no purpose for Javadoc JARs. As a matter of fact, displaying (java)docs from sources also enable IDEs to allow users to jump directly to sources too, which I think is tremendously convenient.
On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 7:57 PM Tim Perry <tim.v...@gmail.com> wrote: > I was going to say the same thing. I'm wondering if there is ever a > situation where someone can download the javadoc jars but not source jars. > > On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 9:58 AM Piotr P. Karwasz <piotr.karw...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > Hi Matt, > > > > On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 at 17:58, Matt Sicker <m...@musigma.org> wrote: > > > > > > ... I’m not sure if IDEs and such can figure out the javadocs from the > > source jar itself. > > > > I have disabled javadoc downloads in my Eclipse ages ago and it still > > shows me javadocs. Whenever sources are available, I don't believe > > that javadoc jars are useful. > > > > Piotr > > >
