Re: Java licensing

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <jfs@computer.org> wrote:
> (first off, I'm not in debian-legal, Cc: me please)
> 
> On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 09:17:16PM -0800, Stephen Zander wrote:
> > >>>>> "Colin" == Colin Walters <walters@debian.org> writes:
> >     Colin> I don't see how they can prevent a clean-room competing
> >     Colin> implementation without software patents.  A license on
> >     Colin> their code does nothing to other implementations.
> > 
> (...)
> > 
> > Followups set to debian-legal
> > 
> 
> 	On this issue, I would appreciate a peer-review of the Debian Java
> FAQ [1] from people at debian-legal, specially for the license-related
> chapter [2]. Is everyone ok on the wording/explanations?

It is mostly OK, although it doesn't really stress enough that Sun
can't make those kind of claims.  So all that I would do is add
something at the end of Section 2.3.1.3 that says

  However, if you have never agreed to the SCSL, then it is still
  permissible, barring any patents that Sun has for the technology,
  for you to create your own clean room version of the 1.2 API.  It is
  important that you never agree to the license, even for the
  documentation.  For example, if you buy a printed book which
  describes the API, there is a long legal history (in the US at
  least), that prohibits attaching these kinds of contracts to books.

We might want to add some IANAL disclaimers, but the laws are actually
pretty clear.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu