OpenJDK GB Minutes: 2007/8/23

[Andy Tripp]

Hi David,

As for the car analogy...certainly the "substantially derived" term is 
an attempt to separate the
potential "OpenJDK with a twist" things from the 
Kaffee/Classpath/Harmony "clean-room"
implementations. Of course people might replace a motor and still call 
it a "Chevy".

The question here is not what term real people use, but what term  theGM 
corporation should put
into a contract to avoid a real potential huge problem with 
modifications.  They'll
try to separate the "true Chevy's" from the "modified Chevy's", and they 
might use a term like
"substantially derived".

I can't imagine that Chevy would let a car dealer put a Chevy engine in 
a Honda and call it a "Chevy".
I doubt they'd let a car dealer regularly replace Chevy engines with 
Honda engines and still call them
"Chevys".


> Getting back to your point...
>
> I think that starting with OpenJDK code and modifying it by removing 
> parts and adding in other parts could be taken as derivation.  That's 
> certainly our position, that swapping out a part like the VM is a 
> derivation.
>
>
> I think it's a matter of ... ah ... percentages?  Perhaps?  Maybe it 
> could be described as a metric of 80% of the result is OpenJDK code 
> then it's substantiallly derived?  80% is a number I pulled out of the 
> air, but I think it demonstrates what I'm getting at.
To be "derived", I would that that number would have to be higher than 
50%, and you can't have both the engine and
the rest of the car being more than 50%. If you allow less than 50%, 
then some other implementation could just
grab a chunk of the OpenJDK and be considered "derived". For example, 
Classpath could grab the missing pieces that it
needs. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just saying that that doesn't 
make Classpath "derived" from OpenJDK, certainly
not "substantially".

Andy
>
> - David Herron
>
>