-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Jagielski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 2:55 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: A Letter from JBoss's lawyers
This is a preliminary evaluation of the issue. It is based on
the input from a disinterested 3rd party. This does not
constitute a formal response of any kind, but is rather part
of the required development discussion regarding this.
This is posted WITHOUT PREJUDICE.
In general, considering that some of the Geronimo developers
also contributed code to JBoss, it would be neither
surprising nor improper if there were found to be some
identical pieces. The requirement should be that authors
submit only such code for which they have clear title.
Although "former project members cannot avoid the rights of
the copyright owner of the collective work that they intend
to copy or change", that does not preclude an author from
also providing his or her own code to the ASF for licensing
under the ASL. As far as is known, there is no code within
Geronimo that was exclusively licensed to JBoss, or is
included in Geronimo without the author's permission.
With respect to the specific exhibits:
Exhibit A: Similarities between two subclasses of
org.apache.lo4j.Level, each of which
implements a TRACE level.
The classes in question are
org.apache.geronimo.code.log.XLevel and
org.jboss.logging.XLevel. Both of them extend org.apache.log4j.Level,
which imposes (and provides) some of the common structure and
names.
The
classes, themselves, are trivial implementations of a new
logging level, the structure of which is dictated by Apache
Log4J. The code seems to be as similar, and as different, as
one would expect from two authors implementing a Log4J TRACE
log level based upon existing Log4J code.
Exhibit B: Similarities between two PatternParser subclasses
in support of the nested diagnostic context pattern.
The similarities come from the fact that both code bases
implement "nested diagnostic contexts" as described by Neil
Harrison in "Patterns for Logging Diagnostic Messages", which
can be found in the book "Pattern Languages of Program Design
3", published in 1997 by Addison-Wesley
(ISBN:
0201310112). Apache Log4J implements this class in
org.apache.log4j.NDC.
This class describes how it is to be used, including the use
of a "distinctive stamp."
The two classes in question,
org.apache.geronimo.code.log.PatternParser
and org.jboss.logging.layout.PatternParserEx, are both
trivial extentions of org.apache.log4j.helpers.PatternParser
in support of this documented pattern. Again, Apache Log4J
provides and imposes structure. I would expect this
similarity to morph shortly because both Geronimo and JBoss
are using Log4J v1.2.8. Log4J v1.3, still in development,
completely refactors how pattern handling is done within Log4J.
ref:
http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/docs/api/org/apache/log4j/NDC.html
Exhibit C: InvocationType
The pattern
public static final TYPE NAME = new TYPE(...);
is boilerplate. It is a well-established Java implementation
pattern found in the JDK and many other code bases. The
aforementioned Log4J code base has an almost identical set of
lines, differing only in TYPE, NAME and parameters to the
TYPE constructor.
The class name, InvocationType, is entirely descriptive of
what the class represents. The term "Invocation" is also
found in the term RMI -- Remote Method Invocation -- and the
class simply represents the type of invocation. The values of
the first parameter: "REMOTE", "HOME", "LOCAL"
and "LOCALHOME" are defined by a J2EE Specification, not by
JBoss. The second parameter is an ordinal from 0 to 3, and
provides its location within a static array. If "I" were
writing the code, "I" might have not had that parameter, but
most programmers probably would. The remaining parameters
are unique to Geronimo, not found in JBoss, and define the
properties of the invocation.
ref:
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs/incubator-geronimo/modules/core/
src/java/
org/a
pache/geronimo/core/service/InvocationType.java?annotate=HEAD
"Further, although not reproduced as an exhibit, we direct
your attention to the similarities in the files named
org.apache.geronimo.common.Invocation (Geronimo) and
org.jboss.invocation.Invocation (JBoss). Both of these files
contain what JBoss believes is highly JBoss-specific payloads,
which are named "AsIs", "Transient," and "Marshalled."
Upon investigation, it is seen that Geronimo's Invocation
class was entirely rewritten more than two months prior to
the communication from Testa, Hurwitz and Thibeault. The
well-established RPC/RMI concepts of transient and marshalled
data are implemented completely differently in current Geronimo code.
