http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=11104 > Apache Software Foundation Proposes Open-source Version of J2SE > 5/9/2005 > By JavaTrends Staff
> The Apache Software Foundation yesterday said it is proposing to > create a new project called Harmony that will lead to the > development of an open-source version of Java 2, Standard Edition > (J2SE) runtime platform. > According to Geir Magnusson Jr., who chairs Apache's Jakarta > Project, the goals of Harmony will be to create a compatible, > independent implementation of J2SE 5 under the Apache License v2; > create a community-developed modular runtime (VM and class library) > architecture to allow independent implementations to share runtime > components, and allow independent innovation in runtime components; > and to create a broad, collaborative community of contributors, > implementers and users of the modular platform specification. > In the proposal, the project's incubators also say Harmony will > include a test suite for interoperability testing of the modules, an > implementation under the Apache License of the modular VM and a > class library under the Apache License compatible with the J2SE 5 > specification that implements the defined interfaces. > Sun has declined to release the source code for J2SE under an > open-source license. In a related FAQ, Magnusson says the project is > not an attack on Sun: "Sun has been a longtime supporter of Apache > and Apache projects, and Apache has a wide variety of projects that > are implementations of Java specifications, such as Apache Geronimo, > Apache Tomcat, Pluto, taglibs etc.," Magnusson writes. > Respecting Sun's intellectual property is an important concern of > the project, Magnusson says. "We shall ask any person that would be > a committer to declare what kind of non-open-source class library or > VM source code they have been exposed to, and allow us to keep them > from participating in the related parts of the codebase where they > may inadvertently violate the IP rights of someone else," he says. > "We shall require that any code contribution that isn't a new, > original work of authorship created expressly for the Apache Harmony > project be subject to the standard Apache process for provenance and > licensing to ensure that we have an accurate record of every > contribution that wasn't created expressly inside the Apache Harmony > project," Magnusson continues. > "We would like to perform continuous surveillance on the codebase we > are building, and compare to class libraries and VMs from elsewhere, > like Sun, IBM, BEA, Kaffe etc. to ensure that no code from those > efforts become part of Apache Harmony without our knowledge," > Magnusson concludes. "We do this to protect ourselves, our users and > of course those other efforts. We don't know yet how to do this but > are exploring ideas such as having a third party such as Black Duck > or an existing licensee (or Sun!) do this for us. This, like all the > topics herein, are open for discussion and change by the community." _______________________________________________ Juglist mailing list [email protected] http://trijug.org/mailman/listinfo/juglist_trijug.org
