On Thursday 20 April 2006 11:34 am, Hannah Schroeter wrote:
On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 09:32:52AM -0400, Kurt Miller wrote:
On Thursday 20 April 2006 8:12 am, Edd Barrett wrote:
One of my friends recently pointed out that FreeBSD are distributing
Java 5 binaries and actually are licensed to do so from Sun
Microsystems! I'm not sure how long thats been happening, but has
anyone made any effort to try to bag a similar agreement for OpenBSD?
If not I am willing to give it a try (with the consent of the OBSD
developers). I think have an email address of a Java Core developer I
met at JavaUK06.
There are two primary reasons why we will not be able
to distribute java binaries:
1) Legal: The OpenBSD project is a collection of individuals.
There is no legal entity associated with the project like a
Foundation or non-profit org. That means there is no singal
point of contact for Sun to contract with and shield the
developers from liability.
2) Political: Even if #1 were solved, the binaries would
come with a binary only license that is incompatible with
the projects goals.
IIRC the project goals mostly apply to base, while the rules for
licencing in ports/packages are less strict. E.g. no new GPL stuff in
base, but new GPL ports/packages are ok. Even more restrictive licences
are accepted, e.g. in textproc/glimpse, where OpenBSD mirrors distfiles
and distributes packages via ftp (but not on CDs because of the
licence conditions).
Sorry. I wasn't too clear about that. The binaries are only
distributeable via a click through license that would need
to be hosted somewhere. Hosting that click through license
on the project web site is what I was referring to. The
binary would not be able to be mirrored too.
On the other hand, I have applied as an individual to Sun's
scholarship program to get access to the test kit for 1.5
(JCK). I was approved by the scholarship committee and now
waiting on Sun to get them.
Do you know without having to check whether it'd be possible for an
individual to obtain such a licence from Sun and distribute inofficial
(wrt the OpenBSD project) Java packages then? Or would that bee too
risky from a legal POV?
I wouldn't put my assets (house, retirement, etc) at risk
to lawsuits from Sun or users of the binaries. I don't think
anyone would really want to do that.
-Kurt
