Question about the SCA

[Rich Sands]

Hi Antonio and all,

Sorry it took so long to answer this. Answers below.

	--  rms

Antonio Cuni wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I am one of the core developer of PyPy_.
> 
> We are considering writing and sending a proposal about a backend for
> `PyPy's JIT generator`_ targeting the JVM (and/or maybe the new Da
> Vinci Machine).
> 
> I won't discuss the details of the proposal here because it is not
> ready yet, but I would like a clarification about the Sun Contributor
> Agreement, which you need to sign to enter the challenge, according to
> the rules.
> 
> After having read it, I seem to understand that the Sun Contributor
> Agreement applies only to the code that goes into a project directly
> managed or owned by Sun; what it's not clear to me is how this
> interacts with the projects that would eventually be sponsored by Sun
> but are not directly managed by it, as in the case of our proposal,
> for which the code developed would go into PyPy's codebase, which is
> clearly not owned nor managed to Sun.
> 
> Our questions are:
> 
> 1. Is it possible to enter the challenge even if the code being
>    developed would be part of an existing project/codebase not directly
>    related to Sun?

Yes. In addition, there must be a clear way for people visiting the OpenJDK community 
site to find all the Challenge projects and the open work being done on them. While 
it is ok for work to happen hosted someplace other than on the OpenJDK project pages, 
that doesn't remove the requirement to do all development in the open, nor to publish 
the source code, and to make it easy to find all of this from the OpenJDK site. See 
4.C. of the Official Rules at http://openjdk.java.net/challenge/rules/ for details.

We think the easiest way for most projects to comply with this would be to host the 
projects on the OpenJDK site but we understand that isn't always possible.

> 
> 2. Does the Sun Contribution Agreement still apply also to that code?

Yes. Whether the work is done on the OpenJDK site or not, it still must be 
contributed under the terms of the SCA.

> 
> 3. (In case the answer to (2) is "yes") Which parts of the codebase
>    will Sun have rights on? Only the new code developed under the terms
>    of the challenge, even if that code it's not usable without the
>    existing code? I hope that the Challenge does not require to give
>    to Sun the rights over all the whole codebase, because it wouldn't be
>    practical to find all the 70 existing developers of PyPy that currently
>    hold the copyright of the various pieces of code.

Only the code developed as part of the Challenge. Sun does not expect independent 
projects to contribute the whole thing to OpenJDK under the SCA as a condition of entry!

> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Antonio
> 
> .. _PyPy: http://codespeak.net/pypy/
> .. _`PyPy's JIT generator`: 
> http://codespeak.net/pypy/dist/pypy/doc/jit.html

-- 
Rich Sands                     Phone: +1 781 881 4067 / x81524
Community Marketing Manager    Email: richard.sands at sun.com
Java SE Marketing              SMS: 6172830027 at vtext.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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