Or as my wife would say opportunities :) Please be gentle. Not trying to start a flame war. Just trying to draw out practial matters.
Facts: - GNU Classpath is *NOT* GPL. It uses GPL+Exception (http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html) - FSF owns copyright for GNU Classpath (example see http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/*checkout*/classpath/classpath/java/lang/Object.java?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain) - The Exception clause was a joint effort with RedHat (as explained by Anthony - http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200505.mbox/[EMAIL PROTECTED]) - Any ASF contributor if they want to make changes to CLASSPATH, will have to adhere to the clean room clauses (http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/faq/faq.html#faq3_2) - For any contributions to classpath there has to be a copyright assignment to the FSF. ASF does not ask for copyright assignment by default as explained by Sam in a previous thread. (http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/faq/faq.html#faq3_4) (http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200505.mbox/[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Issues and possible solutions: - Any source code or Jars under GPL cannot be checked into ASF CVS. One possibility is for FSF folks to publish maven snapshots of the daily build. - Need to check if the classpath jars can be part of a install package from ASF Legal folks. Problem is we don't want users do download two things from two places to get a working JDK/JRE. One solution is the shared classpath instance model where many VM's share the same classpath jar. this may reduce the problem, but not an ideal solution. - Classpath was once LGPL, but ASF/FSF still needs to resolve issues around it, so even that may not be open for the short-term. - It may or may not be very difficult to add/change the Exception clause to make it easier to develop/ship/use code. Need ASF legal and FSF legal folks to chime in. Ideally if we change the exception clause to convey the information in say the MIT license (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php). That would make it REAL easy. But i know it's probably too much to ask for :) Note that the two problems above will vanish if it happens. Question from the point of view of a potential user of Harmony: - Same question i asked for Geronimo...A specific product in my company needs Java's, currently we ship JVM from [SUNW/IBM] by default. This product is NOT positioned as a JVM/JRE engine and NO claims of Java compliance is made. We want use Harmony+Classpath as the default JVM for our product. We will comply with ALL requirements of ASL 2.0 under which Harmony is licensed. We DON'T want to talk to SUN/ASF/FSF or pay them any money (we don't pay SUNW now!!), we DON'T want to run the TCK's before we ship the product. We just want to use Harmony as-is BUT we'd like to issue some patches to our customers if necessary for product support. What are my additional obligations because of Classpath which is the default library in Harmony? (ones that are not applicable to other ASF projects) Thanks, dims -- Davanum Srinivas - http://webservices.apache.org/~dims/
