On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Albrecht Kleine wrote:
> Hi,
The new license may be "less restricted" but it
is clearly not "more free".
> I've heard that it is possible to get
> JDK sources in a much relaxed way than earlier.
>
> I know, this is no lawyer's list, but perhaps some
> of you can write about license compatibility to GPL?
Yes, looking at the JDK source would dirty your
"clean room" implementation.
> For example I've written the TYA JIT under clean room
> conditions, but looking on JDK sources would
> pollute the clean room, no doubt.
You can write GPLed code that uses the Sun JDK but you
can not link GPLed code into Sun sourced. For instance
you can write a GPLed shell script that does an exec()
of java but you can not link GPL and JDK code into a
single executable and then distribute that to others.
> OTOH if Sun releases their sources, writing JDK related
> but GPLed software knowing their sources would not
> disclose any secrets (because Sun disclosed this himself).
> So it should be possible.
That would break "clean room". Do not do it.
> But what if someone would cut & paste some code lines
> from this sources into his own GPLed code? IMHO impossible.
No, you can not provide code to the Kaffe, Japhar, or CLASSPATH
projects if you have agreed to the Sun license. Let's face it,
peoples time is better spent helping out with the free JVM
projects. While Sun's code is the best implementation right now
soon it will be passed up by the Kaffe and Japhar projects.
later
Mo DeJong
dejong at cs.umn.edu
> And what if you have accepted the license, will you be still
> free to contribute to direct competitors of JDK (for example
> kaffe or Japhar)?
>
> Cheers
> Albrecht
>
>
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