Hi All,
I was checking the copies we have of the Jini Specs we maintain, we've
got an index for the specs up on the Apache River website titled
"Apache Jini Specifications v2.1.2" I'm not sure this is quite right,
perhaps it should be "Jini TM Specifications implemented by Apache River
2.1.2" - Any thoughts on a suitable title for this page?
http://incubator.apache.org/river/doc/spec-index.html
Sim has been trying to encourage us to become more involved in
documenting the project, via the mail list and I think our lack of
participation in this area has been a source of frustration. There has
been some significant work performed on the Apache River web site
lately, and I know we've been happy to leave this to Sim and Tom and
they've both put their hearts into this work, but I think we all have a
responsibility for the maintainence of our projects documentation and to
make sure these are correct and honor legal obligations like trademarks
and copyright's etc.
We should all have a look through our new website and make sure we've
got the t's crossed and the I's dotted for Graduation.
I think there may be some confusion about versioning of the Jini
Specifications and what the difference between Jini and Apache River is.
To clarify, Jini is a specification, owned by Sun Microsystems (now
Oracle) and developed in consultation with the "Jini Community", Jini is
a trademark owned by Oracle, Oracle also has the rights to a number of
patents regarding Jini Technology. Apache River has been granted rights
to use these patents, as part of the software grant by Sun Microsystems,
there's also a patent covenant, which covers AL2 code not included in
the software grant.
Apache River now maintains the Jini Specifications (please correct me if
I'm wrong), but Oracle still owns the trademark.
I still think we need to be careful to document publicly that Jini is
trademarked by Sun Microsystems (Oracle) and Apache River is an
implementation of the Jini Specifications.
To maintain the Jini spec, do we need to follow some sort of process as
the "Jini Community", of which Apache River is a major part?
I've noticed that edits can occur on the content of these specifications
without much consultation, so I'm wondering how we should handle this
responsibility in future?
Should the Jini Specification be broken out into a sub project with
releases, votes etc?
This might be useful to include parts of com.sun.jini or accept external
contributions to the spec from downstream projects and determining
future developments, apart from our current implementation.
Cheers,
Peter.
