Out of curiosity, how is this policy (of not being able to release any
source code) affected, if at all, by the new Java license, if and when it
applies to the platform? Can source code be distributed in patch form
(as it normally is anyhow) before the finished product passes the JCK,
under the new license?
Since anyone is (or will be, at least) able to obtain a
source-code license without fee or special permission from Sun, will the
porters themselves be able to claim that their work is done in the public
domain (which it more or less is, or would be, without the JCK restriction)
and therefore the work of the porting team could clearly be released to
the public with or without JCK-compliance, because in fact the entire public
is the porting team (even if many's role is that of merely testing). I don't
see any restriction in the Sun license as to the size of the organization
licensing the source code. As long as the final release passes the
JCK, I don't see a problem.
Then again, I'm not a lawyer, and they have a tendancy to see problems even
where they don't exist. ;-)
And lo, the chronicles report that Seth M. Landsman spake thusly unto the masses:
>
> > We still don't have anything to work with though, or even
> > acknoledgement that someone who is dealing with the situation has seen
> > my request yet. If this was a truly open source project, we'd have
> > already gotten to the code and fixed it by now :). Instead, we have to
> > wait for someone to give us some code to work with, prefereably without
> > having anything proprietary to Sun so we can all chip in.
>
> This is something which is covered time and time again on this
> list.
>
> a. This is not a true open source project. The JDK source code is
> not free nor open source. If you want to find an open source JDK,
> checkout www.classpath.org which is far from being finished, but is free
> and open.
> b. The porters of the JDK are under a very strict licensing
> agreement which prevents them from releasing any source at any time or
> even releasing a binary until it passed the a strict set of tests called
> the JCK.
> c. The porters read this list, but, methinks, have stopped
> acknowledging the "can I help, even though I haven't read the FAQ", "When
> will this be read already?" and "You guys suck because you aren't
> releasing it under the GPL" questions. They are asked and answered far
> too often.
>
> So the answer is, you can help, but you need to get a
> non-commercial license from Sun. This is not open source and never will
> be. Binaries will be released when they are ready and not before. Asking
> will not speed it up.
>
> -Seth (not a member of the porting team, just a lurker)
>
> --
> "It is by will alone I set my mind in motion"
>
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