It seems clear to me that the word "non-transferable" means that you can not
create your own version and transfer the Sun's license to whoever uses your
EJB implementation whether there is money involved during the transfer or
not. I agree with Wes that Sun has the right to revoke the license for good
reason. It prevents splintering of the EJB spec into non-standard
implementations. Sun's Viet Nam was the splintering of the Unix
implementation and, no doubt, they still have the scars from it. So far,
Sun's stewardship of a proprietary, but freely available language (Java),
has been stellar. That is, with the exception of RMI moving toward CORBA
compliance where they've been somewhat recalcitrant. It's still a little
early in the EJB game so Sun may perceive this issue as a critical success
factor. But I conjecture. The only way to definitively resolve this issue is
for the spokesperson for Jonas to talk to the principals at Sun. Does anyone
know who that spokesperson would be? Or, if they are talking to Sun?
-----Original Message-----
From: Wes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 9:27 AM
To: Karen Shaeffer
Cc: Joe Gittings; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: OpenSource and EJB spec license
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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