> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, Peter Donald wrote: > > > I think what Peter said was that you can read the spec only if you > agree with the licence, and that prevents you from implementing it > unless you follow all the rules. >
You can read the spec. You just can't use the spec to create a cleanroom implementation of the specification. You can still read it to understand how to use somebody else's implementation. Presumably, however, having read the spec, you are tainted. > That includes the requirement to pass the official test suite, > and probably other restrictions I don't understand. The problematic clause is this one, I presume: "(vi) satisfies all testing requirements available from the Specification Lead relating to the most recently published version of the Specification six (6) months prior to any release of the clean room implementation or upgrade thereto;" Presumably we cannot distribute the xml-apis unless we can meet this requirement of the spec. This page http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/final/jsr063/ asserts that there is a JAXP TCK, although you can't seem to purchase it online. Other restrictions - who knows? When the spec says "(vii) does not derive from any of the Specification Lead's source code or binary code materials;", it is not clear to me what that covers, especially in the case of JAXP where I think the RI comes from Apache, based on code originally contributed by the Specification Lead (Sun). Also there may be a specific Out-of-Band Sun-Apache licence in place as alluded to by Dirk earlier. > > It's obvious some of the people who worked on this did read > the spec - so it seems this is not a legal implementation. > If there is no specific agreement between Sun and Apache covering this, then I agree. > The licencing and jcp lists are closed to the public, and > this seems to be the job of the PMC and ASF ( to verify > that all the software is legally used ). I can only hope > a lawyer will be used to validate it. > > If this is not resolved - we have to start removing all > dependencies to JAXP and all other APIs that are not legal, > and eventually work on replacements. > > There is no other way. I presume you can still depend on JAXP without having your own clean room implementation, nor including it in a distribution. You would have to require the user to acquire their own copy of the jaxp classes/interfaces. I haven't seen any restrictions in the spec on linking. Conor -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
