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Sun releases Java under GPLv2Sun releases Java under GPLv2Posted Nov 13, 2006 15:59 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544)Parent article: Sun releases Java under GPLv2
RMS discussed this in an interview recently (when it was still speculation). I've transcribed that bit of the interview and stuck it in my blog. Altogether, this is great news.
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Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 16:20 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] Haven't read the link... but let me guess. Richard says that unfree software is unethical. Sun needs to open the code to cleanse their souls, etc.
Links to what RMS says are usually pretty uninteresting, since it's always so predictable.
I'm more interested in what less predictable people are saying.
Agreed that this is good news, though.
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 16:30 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] I'm more interested in what less predictable people are saying. Like who? Can you link to an example interesting, unpredictable statement?
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 19:08 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] You should find some very interesting and original statements here:
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 23:34 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Maybe.
But I've gone through 2-3 pages of comments and most of it revolves around misconceptions about the GPL. Dry stuff to say the least.
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 14, 2006 1:41 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] Misconceptions, yes.
But dry?
You didn't read far enough. ;-)
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 16:33 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Actually if you read the link he said that if they open it 'there's nothing wrong anymore'. i.e., pretty much the opposite of what you thought :)
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 19:01 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] Well, I've read the link now. (My original point was that I felt I pretty much knew what it would say beforehand.)
I'd say (now that I have read it) that I was right. Sun has now cleansed there souls and there is nothing wrong now. (Better late than never.) It's hard to see RMS disapproving once Java is put under his license, after all.
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 14, 2006 12:27 UTC (Tue) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link] Your original post states that without RTFA, you know beforehand that RMS will go on about how Sun still needs to cleanse their souls for ever developing non-free software, and then it turns out that RMS said that he is happy with Sun and that they are doing nothing wrong anymore.
Your conclusion: You where right about what RMS would say all along.
With such a liberal reading of 'right', I fail to see how anyone could ever be wrong.
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 14, 2006 18:52 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] Does it really matter? ;-)
This topic was worth a post or two. But I can't see dragging this out.
I'd say "draw your own conclusions" and I'm fine with that.
-Steve Bergman
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 17:03 UTC (Mon) by jstAusr (guest, #27224) [Link] I've apparently missed the "cleanse their souls" comment do you have a link?Somehow I doubt that unless he was joking.
Your comment is predictable and uninteresting and yet, there it is. Or is it that you don't mind being uninteresting and predictable?
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 19:08 UTC (Mon) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] It's probably an allusion to the "KDE developers need to ask forgivenessfor all the GPL software they used when they weren't allowed to" of years ago.
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 19:21 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] No.
+1 for making that connection, though. I considered the possibility that "cleanse their souls" might be interpretted that way, but decided that it was likely a safe enough wording.
"Forgiveness" was widely misinterpretted by the community back then. I misinterpretted it, myself, at first.
But it turned out to be a legal term that did not mean what some of us thought at first.
Consider my phrase "cleanse their souls" to be a bit hyperbolic. ;-)
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 14, 2006 2:03 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] RMS's statement on "forgiveness" was entirely correct. Read the GPL (v2): by violating it, the violator forfeits his/her license to copy, modify, or distribute the violated code. As copyright holder, RMS was saying that he forgave any such violations, but that the offenders might have to seek forgiveness of others. This language was widely resented by those who didn't understand that there were legal consequences; RMS was asking that these legal consequences be waived, which was hardly a hostile act.
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 14, 2006 9:48 UTC (Tue) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] Of course, for that there would have to be any code from the FSF used inviolation. At that time, there was none.
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 19:23 UTC (Mon) by jeremiah (subscriber, #1221) [Link] Yeah, we know what RMS is going to say, in general, but I still like hearing the words directly from his mouth. Gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside. I'd also like to hear Linus's comments on it as well, not that they would be particually relevent to the subject.
Richard Stallman unusually consistent Posted Nov 14, 2006 10:48 UTC (Tue) by nicku (subscriber, #777) [Link]
I find surprisingly few people who are consistent; those who talk differently, depending on whom they are talking with, seem to me to be boringly common.
Sun releases Java under GPLv2 Posted Nov 13, 2006 22:22 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] I find it strange that RMS carelessly mixes talking about "Java" and Sun's implementations, given how precise he is about other things. Nothing has actually changed about the licensing of "Java", as the FAQ explains in the section about the Java brand. It is somewhat more than a coincidence, but not fundamentally important, that this implementation is owned by the same entity that owns the trademarks.
I'm not entirely sure why RMS would care particularly about this, since he, of all people, should recognize that people can just create a free version of a platform with only proprietary implementations beforehand. I'm surprised that his reaction isn't "That's nice, but what we really want is a 'distribute verbatim' license to the TCKs, because that's the issue with Free access to the Java brand."
Note that modified versions can't be called Java or use the logo (the cup and steam), unless they have been tested by programs that aren't freely distributable. The trademark use is completely appropriate if the modification changes comformance (either intentionally or accidentally), but it would be good to be able to get modified versions certified without a lot of expense and hassle when they are actually comformant.
Stallman consistency Posted Nov 13, 2006 23:31 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Maybe I have been reading Stallman's writings for too long, but I think I understand his ideas. I will indulge in a bit of cheap exegesis.Stallman is always very explicit that "intellectual property" is not a precise term; copyrights, brands, patents, etc. must be dealt with independently. Furthermore, he never worries about access to brands, or limited access to artwork; it is mostly code that his writings are about -- and patents in so far as they limit distribution and use of code. The reason is that software is functional, it does things; but you can call your software a different name or stick a different logo, and it will behave the same. Besides, brands are a legitimate way to protect the integrity of your product, even if it's free software. I think that specifications lie on the "don't care" side of the fence; you can specify whatever you want, that we will implement what we like. When we asked for "free Java", many people confused "free specification of the language" with "free implementation of the virtual machine and class libraries". The Sun claque screamed about the perils of Java language fragmentation; the free software fanclub replied that we only wanted a free implementation. Let Sun choose what "Java" stands for; if necessary, we shall call our version "Gnava" or whatever, just as Ghostscript is a free implementation of Postscript and we all live happily ever after. But now the free implementation does not need to play catch-up incessantly with the growing number of Java-related specifications. Even more importantly, it does not need to carry all the dead weight -- AWT, Swing, Java logging or the obnoxious decisions to bundle the complete Xerces and Xalan. We can build a slim profile server-side Java, download components as needed or even add our own libraries. Now, we all have what we want. This move is both cheaper and more effective than the JCP, JSR's and related "community" efforts to define the language and the extensions, so we can regret that it was not done before. On the other hand, we can rejoice in the fact that the moment has finally come. Java and free software are meant to be just as Unix and GNU were; this is a great day.
Stallman consistency Posted Nov 14, 2006 1:12 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] It's particularly in light of "intellectual property" being an unusably vague term that I find his use of "Java" surprising, especially with the confusion over what "free Java" would entail. It seems to me oddly careless of him not to be talking about "a free Java implementation", but rather talking about this particular implementation as being somehow more inherently "Java" than others.
There's the futher confusion that we didn't ask for a free UNIX; he just wrote one. Then asking Sun for a free Java is confusing, because the only barrier Sun places to just writing your own Java is the brand license, and there's no obvious reason to ask for a free Java implementation from Sun rather than from, say, IBM.
I think he also cares about specifications; it's not important that they be modifiable (in fact, they're most useful when not even the owner may modify them, by policy), but they have to be available under terms that don't restrict distribution or implementation. I.e., we don't have to be allowed to specify what we want, but we need to be able to discuss what programs are going to expect our implementation to do. That's one reason to want to TCKs: so that we can tell that Gnava behaves as JBoss and Eclipse expect, assuming they're looking for a Java-specification-compliant platform.
Today is clearly a good day for free Java, because there's now a (mostly) complete GPL Java implementation known (by reputation) to be fully-compliant. But I wouldn't call it that revolutionary without the TCKs. For example, the obvious thing to do is built it for your favorite unsupported architecture. But hotspot is producing and running native code, which is going to be a problem if your arm JVM is generating and running x86 machine code. So that needs to be written, but then it's impossible to tell if it's perfectly correct without the TCK to test it. I don't see today's release as being fundamentally any more significant than if Classpath were to have completed their implementation and someone with the TCKs reported that it passed.
Stallman consistency Posted Nov 14, 2006 3:27 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] > confusion over what "free Java" would entail
Go and re-read the transcript. The interview took place before the
> talking about this particular implementation as being somehow more
He's not talking about this implementation when he says "SUN should have
Your point about the specification (which is already freely available)
Stallman consistency Posted Nov 14, 2006 22:32 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] There's the futher confusion that we didn't ask for a free UNIX; he just wrote one.Maybe we didn't ask -- as long as proprietary software was just starting to be, and universities could get liberal terms from AT&T, the necessity for a free Unix was not so concerning. The moment people started to care BSD spread like wildfire. I think he also cares about specifications; [...] That's one reason to want to TCKs: so that we can tell that Gnava behaves as JBoss and Eclipse expect [...]Maybe, and your argumentation seems quite sensible to me, but I haven't seen Stallman ask for freely distributable specifications. Maybe he hasn't thought this aspect through. Somehow I doubt it: the TCKs are mostly important for certification, because actual compliance can be measured in different ways such as following the spec or even reverse engineering. If Red Hat or another deep-pocketed organization wants to certify their own customized version of the JVM they can pay for it. For most of us, complying with the freely available spec (and behaving like Sun's implementation) might be enough, if we are to judge by other free software programs. I don't see today's release as being fundamentally any more significant than if Classpath were to have completed their implementation and someone with the TCKs reported that it passed.Make it "if Classpath passed current TCKs and we had an assurance that it would pass any future TCKs as soon as possible", which would be no small feat in itself.
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