Hi all -

We should probably not speculate in re: legal issues.
But I would point out:

- the right to make a clean-room implementation is not 
  the right to distribute it
- adding features does not change or conceal redistribution
- the license prohibits distribution of sun binaries - ejb jar
- there are other licenses - the spec, the binary downloads,
  the JDK (for the language) - which probably operate in concert
- the license is revokable by Sun, so even if you could argue 
  your way out of this one, Sun could change its mind.

Personally, I believe Sun has done us all great service and 
does deserve to be recognized and compensated for it.  The 
situation is not silly nor Sun's position arrogant.  This
is not the case, e.g., of an overbroad or obvious patent.
Further, their community source program is in the open-source
vein, and we need to encourage them that they can continue that 
program and co-exist with other open-source communities.  Sun
will be at the center of many initiatives over the coming years,
and we should not inhibit Sun's community source project or
taint other open-source efforts by making a few decision-makers 
at Sun believe the open-source community will disrespect 
licenses.  

my .02 - wes



Karen Shaeffer wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Apr 04, 2000 at 09:11:10AM +0100, Joe Gittings wrote:
> > >From the Notice:
> >
> > "Sun hereby grants you a fully-paid, non-exclusive, non-transferable,
> > worldwide, limited license (without the right to sublicense), under Sun's
> > intellectual property rights that are essential to practice this
> > Specification, to internally practice this Specification solely for the
> > purpose of creating a clean room implementation of this Specification that:
> > ....."
> >
> > All the subsequent conditions in this paragraph are aimed at ensuring full
> > compliance with the spec and preventing fragmentation of the EJB standard.
> >
> > I don't see which bit of this prohibits an open source EJB server. Nowhere
> > in the notice do they specify any restrictions on how the clean room
> > implementation can be redistributed.
> >
> > Joe
> ---end quoted text---
> 
> The problem may be in the widely accepted notion that an open source program
> is freely open to unrestricted derivation of the source code. How does that play
> with Sun?
> 
> c,
> Karen
> --
> ----
>   Karen Shaeffer
>   Neuralscape; Santa Cruz, Ca. 95060
>   [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://www.neuralscape.com
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