Stallman consistency

Stallman consistency

Posted Nov 14, 2006 3:27 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322)
In reply to: Stallman consistency by iabervon
Parent article: Sun releases Java under GPLv2

> confusion over what "free Java" would entail

Go and re-read the transcript. The interview took place before the
announcement and does not once mention trademarks and language
definitions. It's about software. Stallman is not in the least
ambiguous: "if SUN's Java implementation becomes free software, it will
be a part of our community".

> talking about this particular implementation as being somehow more
> inherently "Java" than others.

He's not talking about this implementation when he says "SUN should have
made Java free software before". He's talking about what Sun came up
with many years ago, which was unambiguously the first and only Java
implementation. The trademark, standardisation and validation business
came about through historical accident after Microsoft's co-optation of
code it licensed from Sun. If Sun had licenced Java to MS under the GPL
in the first place then embrace-and-extend would have been quite
impossible.

Your point about the specification (which is already freely available)
and compliance test suites (which are not) is absolutely correct. I
think the interview didn't cover this issue at all. I hope (and presume)
that Sun will release its TCK in some acceptable form soon. Probably not
GPL, but you never know.

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