On 8 September 2016 at 16:07, Kirk Wolf <[email protected]> wrote: > Tony, > > Everyone can have their own opinion. Mine is that the statement means > that Java byte code is eligible; otherwise it is inconsistent and already > violated by many, many cases and organizations including IBM themselves. > I am pretty sure that my IP attorney would say that the language is poorly > written.
I'm not sure that it's poorly written as much as that it's ambiguous and incomplete -- perhaps intentionally so. Probably it was rushed out after the Neon affair. But it doesn't matter. > For example: I am reasonably certain that Websphere can't violate the zAAP > eligibility license terms, but Websphere includes byte code that did not > originate from Java-language source code. Also, IBM's own tooling > converts annotations into byte-code modifications (those are not part of > the "Java language") - would you argue that those are not zAAP eligible? I'm not arguing it one way or another. I raised the issue in the Scala context only because it seemed a bit surprising that no one else had. (Though I am pretty sure that IBM's own code doesn't have to conform to any rules in a customer licence agreement.) With respect, I think you -- like Gil -- are thinking like a programmer rather than a lawyer. I like to think that way too. Your arguments make complete sense, but are, imho, not relevant. We programmers tend to think that Legal Reasoning is what The Law is all about. It's not - it's only a tiny part of what lawyers do for a living. May I point you to an old article that I think has been mentioned here before: http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html (warning - may not play well with ad and tracker blockers) The details are quite different (the article is on the face of it about patents, and I'm not bring those into this discussion), but it perhaps gives the flavour of what I am trying to say about the futility of arguing over such a document.. > If you are really worried, then open an ETR or get an IBM representative to > clarify the eligibility terms. I'm not at all worried; it really doesn't concern me. I'm just trying to point out that this is not a case of a technical agreement that can be argued algorithmically to come out with a binding answer. If IBM sufficiently dislikes the result, they will change the agreement. If the result doesn't bother them, they won't. The agreement didn't exist at all until an unexpected result bothered them. Simple as that. Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
