Hi, >From informal chat in IRC, Davanum Srinivas (dims) said that each committer (not contributor) will sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) with Sun to be able to use Sun's TCK (Technology Compatibility Kit), which is required for Harmony to be certified as Java.
He also said that each contributor (not committer) will be able to test their patches against Harmony's own test cases and against mauve. This would mean, I think, that Harmony/mauve would duplicate Sun's TCK. First of all, it seems undesirable to duplicate Sun's TCK, and it seems difficult to make sure that this is legal. If all the Harmony committers sign a Sun NDA, will that mean that any test cases they write for Harmony or mauve will be suspect, on IP (Intellectual Property) grounds? Perhaps it would be better if at least one Harmony committer didn't sign the Sun NDA, then they wouldn't have anything to disclose. Further, it seems undesirable that a normal contributer (not committer) shouldn't be able to test their patches against the TCK, which is what you'd expect the committers to do before committing. Would it be possible/advisable to provide an interface to the TCK that a normal developer could use, without the Sun NDA (which I haven't read) being breached, e.g., a web page. Even if that was legal, technically it would be damn hard, because of security considerations, etc. Part of the 'etc' would be time; can part of the TCK be run, rather than the whole thing? I'd imagine the answer would be yes, but the method to do it might be laborious. Is the Sun NDA publically available, or is it subject to the Sun NDA? ;) Is the TCK's own licence under review at all, i.e., will it ever become free? While we're on a testing thread, what will Harmony's own test suite/cases use/look like?
