Re: OpenJDK draft trademark license

[Mark Reinhold <mr@sun.com>]

> Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:54:29 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Walter Landry <wlandry@caltech.edu>

> Mark Reinhold <mr@sun.com> wrote:
>> It's definitely not Sun's intent here to forbid downstreams from doing
>> their own security fixes.  Most (all?) security fixes tend to be small
>> in terms of lines of code affected, and the "vast majority" phrasing
>> does allow a complementary "tiny minority" of code to be different for
>> unspecified reasons, so I think they're already allowed by the current
>> language.
> 
> Ok.  It is just that section 1a makes it seem like the only changes
> (as opposed to omissions) allowed are portability changes made by an
> approved project.  Might I suggest a simplification of section 1 to
> 
>   (1) Either
> 
>       (a) The Software is a substantially complete implementation of
>           the OpenJDK development-kit or runtime-environment source
>           code retrieved from a single Website, and the vast majority
>           of the Software code is identical to that upstream Original
>           Software, or
> 
>       (b) The Software is a combination of a Virtual Machine from one
>           Website combined with the Library and Tools of another
>           Website, so long as the vast majority of the code in each is
>           identical to the corresponding upstream Virtual Machine or
>           Library and Tools component.
> 
> I do not think that the section on portability fixes is really needed,
> since, even with portability fixes, I would expect that the vast
> mojority of the code would be the same.

Actually, some portability fixes can be quite significant.  Porting the
HotSpot virtual machine to a brand-new architecture, e.g., can easily
create a few hundred thousand lines of new code in a hundred or so new
files.  Such a change would not pass the "vast majority" test, hence the
need for the current sub-clause (a).

> This is not a critical change, since you are going to put a
> clarification in the FAQ.  But it would be better to clear it up in
> the license.

If you're content with security fixes being discussed in the FAQ then
I'd like to leave the text of the notice as-is.

- Mark