Ed Huott writes:
> The license states that binaries derived from the licensed (Sun's)
> source code cannot be distributed for a fee or with any product for
> which a fee is charged. It also states that the Licensed Software cannot
> be used "for commercial or productive" use without getting a commercial
> license from Sun.
>
> On the other hand, permission is given to distribute derived binaries
> freely as long as it is done so "subject to a license agreement
> containing terms and conditions at least as protective of Sun as those
> included in the binary code license used by Sun for internet distribuion
> of the Java binaries." The license also expressly gives the right to
> "create ports."
>
> Taken together, does this mean the following are disallowed without
> first getting a commercial license from Sun:
First, I'm not a lawyer. I can only say that I know of Sun's intentions at the
time I was involved in drafting this wording:
> 1) Distributing a Java product with a JRE produced by the Java-Linux
> porting project?
Sun's intention (as I believe it to be) is that you can ship JRE for free no
matter what. It's the runtime environment, and they want it to be as
ubiquitous as possible.
> 2) Running a commercial web server with servlets running on a JVM from
> the Java-Linux JDK or JRE?
JRE -- definitely no problem. If the Web server contained JDK as it was
shipped, then it must have a commercial license from Sun. If you added it
after the fact, and you're not redistributing it, I think it's ok, but that's
just my understanding.
> 3) Commercial Java product development using the Java-Linux JDK?
You can develop commercial products with the JDK -- you just can't SHIP the JDK
for free if you're charging money for your product. The sense is that if you
are going to make money off of what you do by including the JDK, you owe Sun
some portion of that for the use of the JDK.
> I'm assuming the above restrictions do not actually exist based on the
> way the Java-Linux JDK seems to be being distributed and used. The
> license that comes with the Java-Linux (binary) JDK distribution seems
> to be the same one that Sun distributes with its JDKs. I'm just hoping
> that someone on this list can definitively state that this assumption is
> correct.
We're distributing it for free, so no royalties are needed. The license *IS*
the one that Sun ships with JDKS -- we don't change that stuff when we do
ports.
Steve
