Mark Wielaard wrote:
Hi Leo,
On Wed, 2005-11-09 at 05:38 -0800, Leo Simons wrote:
I keep getting lost in the licensing discussions. I *think* the below accurately
represents where we are right now.
Thanks for writing this down. I'll try to clarify some things below.
There is one nitpick with the whole setup though. It really reads as if
harmony is just an ordinary Apache project. While when we started it we
want it to be something that is a much larger cooperative effort between
various different individuals, organizations and projects with similar
goals but completely different backgrounds. Presenting harmony as just
an Apache project doesn't do justice to it. And I feel it will fail if
we do that. There are a lot of people working on all the sister projects
who we currently are not giving the feeling they are part of our harmony
collaboration. This is not something specific to your email though. I
often get the feeling that people on this list act as if Apache is the
be all, end all for harmony and getting to a free software replacement
for the proprietary non-free j2se implementations. And that does push
away a lot of people who have been working on all this for years without
any Apache involvement at all. I personally feel that way at times
reading some of the discussions. Lets try to be a little more inclusive
and get the support of those hundreds of people working already on the
same goal, but who don't currently feel part of harmony.
This may be some what off topic, but I'm going to ask anyway...
I am not clear what it is about the GPL which does not allow someone to
package it up and distribute it for use with non-GPL code. It seems that
there are plenty of parts of the J2SE puzzle already available,
regardless of their licenses. What is stopping anyone from putting them
all together with their respective licenses and source files, and adding
some polish and saying, "Here is a compliant java runtime! Enjoy."??? A
well organized package could keep all the parts logically separated for
anyone to figure out what the various sub-components are. You would be
simply saving people the time required to put all the pieces together
themselves.
It seems that this sort of approach would be the best way to get lots of
people, and other projects, involved.
I'm lawyer-phobic, so anyone who can explain the problem with this in
plain English, please do. (I'm assuming other people have considered
this since it seems like such an obvious course to take if your goal is
to produce a completely open java runtime).
Thanks,
Neil
