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Date:      Sun, 26 Aug 2001 18:19:13 -0700
From:      "Anthony Green" <green@redhat.com>
To:        "Greg Lewis" <glewis@eyesbeyond.com>, <shudo@computer.org>
Cc:        <freebsd-java@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Contributing...
Message-ID:  <000201c12f00$096e17c0$5be6b4cd@cygnus.com>
References:  <3B8688AA.6956F1BD@ideasandassociates.com> <20010825115852W.shudoh@aist.go.jp> <20010826021022.A43240@misty.eyesbeyond.com>

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Greg wrote:
> There is certainly
> nothing in the SCSL which says I can't work on any other Java
> projects like that.  Is it GNU policy?

We at Cygnus (now Red Hat) established the GCJ and Mauve policies before
gcj/libgcj was donated to the FSF.   At the time it was very unclear how Sun
would react to cleanroom Java Programming Language implementations.   To be
honest, it's still not all that clear to me.

I think we've been very flexible on Mauve.  Our compiler and runtime library
are a different matter.  We're still being extremely careful about potential
copyright violations - perhaps overly so - but it's not clear how this
policy is impeding our progress, so we'll probably just continue along with
the status quo.

While I'm on the subject I'll complain about something that is really
troublesome.  Some of the more recent specs from Sun (J2ME and others) say
something like: feel free to implement a cleanroom version of this spec, but
make sure you implement every single class and no more.  What's not clear to
me is how rules like this play in the Open Source world.   Does this mean no
intermediate releases with missing functionality?  Do you have to be "closed
source" until it's all done?  I suppose I'll have to go to Sun for
clarification, but opinions are welcome.

Thanks,

AG



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