OpenJDK projects promoting proprietary builds

[Andrew John Hughes]

I agree wholeheartedly, but have to say I long ago ceased to be
surprised by Sun builds beinge proprietary. Sadly the converse is
true; I'd be surprised by a Sun build released under the same terms as
our IcedTea builds.

On 29/05/2009, Mark Wielaard <mark at klomp.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Since we are all in frantic-release mode just before JavaOne I wanted to
> double check some of the new features against other builds. I was
> somewhat surprised to find that various projects only promote and/or
> publish proprietary builds. The jdk7 binaries published on the list, but
> also nio2 builds, sctp builds (these were the two I was interested in,
> there might be others), are published under proprietary terms and not
> just under the GPL.
>
> The terms are particularly anti-social since they explicitly forbid
> sharing the binaries with others, learning what the corresponding source
> code is, modifying or creating any derivative works, and agreeing that
> Sun will be "irreparably harmed" if you don't keep everything you learn
> from those binaries confidential.
>
> Could we please have OpenJDK projects only publish artifacts under the
> terms listed at http://openjdk.java.net/legal/
>
> Those terms even allows publishing binaries that contain some of the
> proprietary blobs as long as the rest is published under the GPL, thanks
> to the assembly exception, if that really is necessary (and it really
> shouldn't be necessary anymore since people have been publishing full
> GPLed builds for almost 2 years now).
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mark
>
>


-- 
Andrew :-)

Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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