Johan Walles wrote:
-----Original Message-----
"This represents "Management Information System." This is generally a system based on a mainframe or minicomputer. Some companies have a department labeled "MIS" that may serve various puposes in the company, generally networking related."
Thanks for the reference!
Debian's apt infrastructure would probably qualify, which would solve the problems of packaging and derivative works.
It would be better to have something like that in the license, though. Any idea how to creatively interpret the 'internal' bit?
I thought the buildds didn't build stuff in non-free? And even if they did, the "build" process for JRockit would only consist of taking a JRockit tar file distributed by BEA and shuffle the files into a Debian package. Thus, the build times wouldn't contain any benchmarking of the JVM.
Oh. I'm sorry about that confusion. I wanted to say that it would speak against using jrockit to build other java packages, like tomcat or ant in buildds.
' If the version of JRockit you are licensing under this Agreement isa “ pre-final,” “beta,” “technology preview,” or similar pre-production release (collectively, “Pre-final Versions”), as a condition to this license you agree to discontinue your use of the Pre-final Version and replace each copy of such Pre-Final Version with the successor general availability release as soon as it becomes available from BEA.' which is impossible to satify as BEA does not provide debian packages.I don't follow you. Why would this clause require BEA ship Debian packages?
If I get a 'beta' package for jrockit, then I must 'replace it with the successor' version of JRockit as soon as it becomes available 'from BEA' and discontinue my use of old JRockit version.
That means when BEA releases a new version I have to stop using the old version, and wait till someone creates a package for it. Since BEA doesn't make debian packages available, it is impossible to 'replace each copy' 'with the successor' 'available from BEA'. The 'available from BEA' bit is ambiguous: shall I update my debian package with a tarball from BEA?
The clause doesn't require BEA to ship packages. It requires that I stop using JRockit as soon as they update a beta I'm using, which is kind of inconvenient :)
It would also need to be clarified what that would mean for debian packages of betas: do they have to be purged from FTP servers as soon as BEA releases an update?
I asked to get a copy of it for the specific purpose of having it disected. But I agree the clause sounds silly, I'll ask about it.
Thanks!
I'd doubt that Debian would make any "representations or warranties [...] in the distribution". So unless Debian promises the world to users of the JRockit .deb, this point is a no-op for Debian.
Not necessarily. An indemnification clause is financially quite risky for a volunteer project, and it's never clear how those things would end up being interpreted in court. Let me try to draw up a completely hypothetical example:
Let's say Debian includes JRockit as 'A virtual machine for Java'. Java is a trademarked term, and there are a lot of funny restrictions on its use to label software. BEA is a SCSL licensee, afaik. So, let's say another commercial SCSL licensee that happens to be a JVM vendor downloads Debian-sid with JRockit on it, runs the JDK TCK, and notices deviations in spec compliance on Debian-sid. Then he convinces Sun to sue BEA for abusing the Java trademark by letting Debian ship a non-compliant SCSL-derived JVM. [1] After the legal battles are settled, BEA can come to claim the cash spent on lawyers back from Debian, because it was Debian that said that 'jrockit is a virtual machine for Java', but BEA doesn't make claims that jrockit is certified on Debian.
Of course this is not likely to happen, and it's a purely hypothetical example. It's intended to show that any indemnification clause puts the Debian project at the risk of becoming collateral damage in big corporate legal battles.
cheers, dalibor topic[1] The claim does not have to make sense in order to go to court. It only needs to make enough sense to a judge not be rejected flat out. As soon as it gets to court, BEA could pull the 'Debian did it, not us!' joker and ask for Debian to pay up. I'm not saying that they would, I'm saying that the license offers the ability to do so.