Study capabilities, not intent [LWN.net]

Study capabilities, not intent

Posted May 18, 2006 6:36 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501)
In reply to: Study capabilities, not intent by cventers
Parent article: Java becomes more distributable

"OK, I'll admit it -- I really don't like Sun, Solaris, Java or the people
involved."

I too have generally got a bad vibe from Sun over Java and the CDDL. However, after hearing Simon Phipps here at Debconf talking about where they are going, where they have come from and why the licenses are the way they are, I have to say I am a lot more inclined to give them some slack than before. There are sun Java developers at Debconf, and Danese Cooper who wrote the CDDL. All of them appear to have an excellent understanding of the problems the Free Software community has with Sun and its licenses, and are doing a good job of explaining to the rest of the huge organisation how they need to change if they want us to stop being rude about them. But that is a really slow process for a multitude of reasons.

Now 3 good people in a 38,000 employee organisation does not guarantee anything, but it is clear to me that significant people are pushing in the right direction and Sun really is trying to be a proper friend of free software. The CDDL has been tweaked to make opensolaris free-er and more Debian-compatible - further tweakage is likely. The new Java licence is a (rather late) step in the right direction, and at least parts of Sun really do want to make it properly free (and realise that ultimately they have to if they don't want to become irrelevant). I think those people would benefit from our support (as well as constructive criticism).

So, Sun haters - there is genuine good will here; lets try to cultivate it.

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