Sun and Licensing issues

[Peter Donald <pe...@apache.org>]

Hi,

There seems to be a lot of confusion about Apaches stance regarding the 
JCP/Sun entity and its licensing practices. I have heard a few different 
opinions ranging from Sun "the evil empire" is doing bad things to "the 
whiny" Apache people are whining about being abused by Sun. Whatever.

Here is my understanding of the situation.

When a JSR is created all participants must license their "IP" to Sun 
allowing Sun to use it in a relatively liberal fashion. Eventually a 
"standard" is created and is licensed to the public. One of the conditions of 
the license is that any implementation created using the "standard" must pass 
the TCK. 

So lets say I wanted to create an implementation of some standard - lets say 
JavaMail. Inevitably I would need to look at the standards documents or 
implementation etc. The license conditions require that I pass the TCK if I 
am to use any of the "IP". 

So even if I wrote a completely clean room implementation of JavaMail I would 
be in violation of the license for the standard unless I ponied up the $ to 
pass the TCK. And if Sun wanted (and their license stood up in court) they 
could kill the project eaisly enough (Aassuming that an opensource project 
cant afford TCK testing).

So strictly speaking projects like xerces/xalan (which implement JAXP spec) 
are in violation of this license? So to are projects like JBoss , OpenJM*, 
OpenEJB etc. Suns is unlikely to go after these projects unless they felt 
that it hurt the "java" brand. 

SO if xerces were to be implemented in C# and exposed an API similar to JAXP 
but for C# Sun may try to shut it down. If JBoss tried to do port to C# would 
Sun try to block it? However they presumably couldn't do this to a C# 
catalina as the TCK is watchdog?

Isn't what Apache has a problem with is that the TCKs are not licensed in an 
open manner so that there is the possibility of a legal opensource 
implementation of the APIs? 

This is even more of a problem given that many of the TCKs created by EG 
members or Spec Leads and not by Sun (except those cases where Sun is on EG 
or a Spec Lead). 

-- 
Cheers,

Pete

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The difference between genius, and stupidity? Genius has limits
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