Stefan Wille wrote:
> I want to put the Netbeans IDE on a
> CD that accompanies my book. Will this
> violate somebody's copyright?
Well, this is really a question for the Netbeans folks, but I'll try,
subject to my usual disclaimers (I am not a lawyer, this is not legal
advice, it's just my personal opinion):
To the extent that the Netbeans code is under the Sun Public License
(which is a variant of the Mozilla Public License or MPL), the SPL (like
the MPL) grants you rights to freely redistribute the relevant code in
source or binary form, online or on physical media. See sections 2.1 and
2.2 of the SPL, particularly 2.1(a) and 2.2(a).
However not all of the Netbeans-related packages are under the SPL, as
discussed below, and so you can't necessarily rely on the SPL itself to
know what your rights are.
> Especially the copyright of the binaries that come with Netbeans
> like fastjavac, javac.jar or jaxp.jar?
Based on my investigation, these files in particular (which are not part
of "core Netbeans") are included in the file
NetBeans-release32-extbin.zip (or .tar.gz) made available for download
from the "extra binaries" section of the Netbeans download page:
http://www.netbeans.org/project/www/downloads.html#extbin
As part of the download process you have to agree to a separate license
agreement (separate from the SPL). Based on my reading, that license
agreement does not give you blanket permission to redistribute the
binaries, but for certain of the binaries you are in fact allowed to
redistribute the code if you comply with certain restrictions. However I
don't know if this is true for all the binaries you wish to distribute.
> Or do you know whom I can contact on this?
> The Netbeans website points to this newsgroup for licensing questions.
Well, that seems quite cheeky of them :-) (I'm just joking. The
Netbeans project helps pay my salary -- since my employer helped Sun set
up the project -- so I'm happy to answer this question, even though it's
strictly speaking off-topic for this newsgroup, especially given that
the question really has nothing to do with the MPL-based Sun Public
License.)
To sum up, I think you (or your publisher) are going to have to contact
Sun itself in order to ensure that you have the necessary permissions
you need for all the Netbeans-related files that you want to distribute
on your CD. If you need to find a specific contact at Sun, please send
me private email; I don't myself know who you should contact, but I can
ask my co-workers if necessary.
Frank
--
Frank Hecker work: http://www.collab.net/
[EMAIL PROTECTED] home: http://www.hecker.org/
