Sun JRE or JDK to enter core, or at least extras?

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 02:09:49PM -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> > any comments on
> > http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2006-05/sunflash.20060516.4.xml ?
> > I understand this as an indicator, that the Sun JDK and JRE should now
> > be distributable via Fedora Core or Extras? If so, I would very much
> > like to see this.
> This pretty much kills it:
> 2c. ``you do not combine, configure or distribute the Software to run in
> conjunction with any additional software that implements the same or
> similar functionality or APIs as the Software''

The "it's not open source" kills it for Fedora.

But for "non-free", I don't believe this is a problem. I think the people on
the JPackage list who are concerned about this are misinterpreting --
remember, licenses are written in legalese, which is formed from English
words but where the meaning of certain terms is determined by heaps of case
law and precedent, not necessarily by the dictionary.

My assumption, given that Sun people say that this clause does not prevent
distribution of the JDK _alongside_ GCJ etc., is that people are reading
the phrase "in conjunction with" more strongly than it should be. A more
narrow reading indicates that you can't use the Sun JVM with GNU Classpath,
but you can use and distribute them both _not_ in conjunction.

But really, a lawyer needs to answer this question.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org          <http://mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>              <http://linux.bu.edu/>