[arch-dev-public] java licensing issues
Hi developers and users, As we all know, there's a distribution restriction on sun java. Today we asked at the Sun booth about possibilities for distributing java with our distribution. This solution would come down to entering a process which can take quite some months to get a final approvement. This means that until we would have such a solution, any Sun java we distribute is illegal. This would mean that jdk and jre can't have a place in our distribution at least for the upcoming few months if we choose to apply for a license. If we don't choose to apply for a license, it won't come back either. I would opt for not applying for a license, as it will license us to distribute it, but disallows all forks, livecds or even unofficial architectures of archlinux to do it. As we have GNU java right now supporting java 5.0, I would suggest approving GNU java as the prefered JDK and moving jdk/jre to unsupported. We are allowed to distribute build scripts, but users have to download the java binary themselves and build a package out of that. We leave it up to the user to have a non-free java, we won't force anything (java-environment and java-runtime will always stay runtime dependencies instead of depending on java-gcj-compat). At the final end of this mail I would like to have a word about the so called OpenJDK that was released as GPL: Though this Open JDK has been released as source, the sun provided binary JDK at this moment is anything but GPL. The problem with openjdk is that it needs jdk to get built (gcj is not enough). Also, the released sources are not complete because sun has licensing restrictions with 3rd parties themselves. This means we can't switch to Sun's free OpenJDK yet. At this moment Redhat has plans to stop further active development of gcj in their distribution and put their manpower in openjdk, to get it built with free tools and to extend the missing parts with pieces from other javas like GNU java. When this project is usable enough to replace java-gcj-compat as we have it now, it will enter the distribution and become the blessed Java SDK/runtime.
On 6/1/07, Jan de Groot
Hi developers and users,
As we all know, there's a distribution restriction on sun java. Today we asked at the Sun booth about possibilities for distributing java with our distribution. This solution would come down to entering a process which can take quite some months to get a final approvement. This means that until we would have such a solution, any Sun java we distribute is illegal.
This would mean that jdk and jre can't have a place in our distribution at least for the upcoming few months if we choose to apply for a license. If we don't choose to apply for a license, it won't come back either. I would opt for not applying for a license, as it will license us to distribute it, but disallows all forks, livecds or even unofficial architectures of archlinux to do it.
As we have GNU java right now supporting java 5.0, I would suggest approving GNU java as the prefered JDK and moving jdk/jre to unsupported. We are allowed to distribute build scripts, but users have to download the java binary themselves and build a package out of that. We leave it up to the user to have a non-free java, we won't force anything (java-environment and java-runtime will always stay runtime dependencies instead of depending on java-gcj-compat).
I like this idea in theory.... but we'll have to try and make it as clear as possible what's happening. But yeah, when licensing rigmarole like this happens, might as well say "screw you then" and use a better alternative.
On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 08:15:19PM +0200, Jan de Groot wrote:
Hi developers and users,
As we all know, there's a distribution restriction on sun java. Today we asked at the Sun booth about possibilities for distributing java with our distribution. This solution would come down to entering a process which can take quite some months to get a final approvement. This means that until we would have such a solution, any Sun java we distribute is illegal.
I thought that we were following the dlj guidelines... did you mention anything to them about that? https://jdk-distros.dev.java.net/ Any other approach we made, we'd have to make sure that all our currently supported java apps still work. I only know about the couple that I maintain... Jason
On Fri, 2007-06-01 at 11:52 -0700, Jason Chu wrote:
On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 08:15:19PM +0200, Jan de Groot wrote:
Hi developers and users,
As we all know, there's a distribution restriction on sun java. Today we asked at the Sun booth about possibilities for distributing java with our distribution. This solution would come down to entering a process which can take quite some months to get a final approvement. This means that until we would have such a solution, any Sun java we distribute is illegal.
I thought that we were following the dlj guidelines... did you mention anything to them about that?
https://jdk-distros.dev.java.net/
Any other approach we made, we'd have to make sure that all our currently supported java apps still work. I only know about the couple that I maintain...
Looks promising, but it still leaves us with an outdated jdk/jre full of bugs which are fixed already in the commercial version. Also, I wouldn't know how to run sun's JDK on archppc for example, something which is possible with the GNU java framework we have. About broken projects: we will test which ones will work tomorrow. At least the Sun compiler suite is broken with it because they do hardcoded version checks, but that one is broken anyways because glibc contains C ++ code in the C headers which works fine in gcc but breaks in the sun compiler ;). This gcc-gcj release looks very solid to me, there shouldn't be any problem running eclipse with it for example (hey, gcj is compiled by eclipse ;)).
On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 09:39:23PM +0200, Jan de Groot wrote:
On Fri, 2007-06-01 at 11:52 -0700, Jason Chu wrote:
On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 08:15:19PM +0200, Jan de Groot wrote:
Hi developers and users,
As we all know, there's a distribution restriction on sun java. Today we asked at the Sun booth about possibilities for distributing java with our distribution. This solution would come down to entering a process which can take quite some months to get a final approvement. This means that until we would have such a solution, any Sun java we distribute is illegal.
I thought that we were following the dlj guidelines... did you mention anything to them about that?
https://jdk-distros.dev.java.net/
Any other approach we made, we'd have to make sure that all our currently supported java apps still work. I only know about the couple that I maintain...
Looks promising, but it still leaves us with an outdated jdk/jre full of bugs which are fixed already in the commercial version. Also, I wouldn't know how to run sun's JDK on archppc for example, something which is possible with the GNU java framework we have.
It's what we use right now with i686. That's why I didn't want to package 6u1 because they haven't released it under the dlj license.
About broken projects: we will test which ones will work tomorrow. At least the Sun compiler suite is broken with it because they do hardcoded version checks, but that one is broken anyways because glibc contains C ++ code in the C headers which works fine in gcc but breaks in the sun compiler ;). This gcc-gcj release looks very solid to me, there shouldn't be any problem running eclipse with it for example (hey, gcj is compiled by eclipse ;)).
I'm more worried about software that comes precompiled, like cgoban2. Not being able to play go on any computer, wherever I am, at any time would just destroy me! ;) Jason
On Fri, 2007-06-01 at 13:02 -0700, Jason Chu wrote:
Looks promising, but it still leaves us with an outdated jdk/jre full of bugs which are fixed already in the commercial version. Also, I wouldn't know how to run sun's JDK on archppc for example, something which is possible with the GNU java framework we have.
It's what we use right now with i686. That's why I didn't want to package 6u1 because they haven't released it under the dlj license.
We don't make it inaccessible though. We will force packages to makedepend on GNU java, but for runtime, you're free to use sun, blackdown or whatever java. We just don't install it by default, since we want to use a free java without license restrictions.
About broken projects: we will test which ones will work tomorrow. At least the Sun compiler suite is broken with it because they do hardcoded version checks, but that one is broken anyways because glibc contains C ++ code in the C headers which works fine in gcc but breaks in the sun compiler ;). This gcc-gcj release looks very solid to me, there shouldn't be any problem running eclipse with it for example (hey, gcj is compiled by eclipse ;)).
I'm more worried about software that comes precompiled, like cgoban2. Not being able to play go on any computer, wherever I am, at any time would just destroy me! ;)
cgoban2 works fine with GNU java (tested it). GNU java really improved a lot since it's the only way for distributions like redhat, ubuntu and debian to provide a free java on all architectures.
Am Freitag, 1. Juni 2007 21:39:23 schrieb Jan de Groot:
This gcc-gcj release looks very solid to me, there shouldn't be any problem running eclipse with it for example (hey, gcj is compiled by eclipse ;)).
Was there any change to the java license or is the current jdk distribution of arch just illegal? Does eclipse really work with gcj? Last time a take a look at gcj and classpath they were far away from implementing a full jdk6 including swing etc.. -- Pierre Schmitz Clemens-August-Straße 76 53115 Bonn Telefon 0228 9716608 Mobil 0160 95269831 Jabber pierre@jabber.archlinux.de WWW http://www.archlinux.de
On Sat, 2007-06-02 at 14:03 +0200, Pierre Schmitz wrote:
Am Freitag, 1. Juni 2007 21:39:23 schrieb Jan de Groot:
This gcc-gcj release looks very solid to me, there shouldn't be any problem running eclipse with it for example (hey, gcj is compiled by eclipse ;)).
Was there any change to the java license or is the current jdk distribution of arch just illegal? Does eclipse really work with gcj? Last time a take a look at gcj and classpath they were far away from implementing a full jdk6 including swing etc..
Our current distribution makes use of the DLJ, which allows distribution. This is a special non-free distribution license that only allows specific versions to get distributed. About eclipse: Ubuntu and Redhat have it running with GNU java. The recent work done on eclipse-ecj integration in GNU Java I did makes GNU java fully support java 5.0, which is enough to be competetive these days. GCJ is no longer a compiler, it's a wrapper to the eclipse compiler now.
Am Fri, 1 Jun 2007 11:52:34 -0700
schrieb Jason Chu
I thought that we were following the dlj guidelines... did you mention anything to them about that?
https://jdk-distros.dev.java.net/
Any other approach we made, we'd have to make sure that all our currently supported java apps still work. I only know about the couple that I maintain...
Jason
they updated the distribution website also for direct downloads. i686 should update now very soon to solve the security lacks! Andy
participants (5)
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Aaron Griffin
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Andreas Radke
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Jan de Groot
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Jason Chu
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Pierre Schmitz