BSD port

[Carla Schroer]

Dear Kurt,

Thanks for the additional information and a specific request that we can 
work with. I have spoken to one of our attorneys, and I want to give you 
a little background and let you know how we propose resolving this for 
the 6 folks listed here.  

There are a couple of issues in getting this work done.  The most obvious one is Sun getting code back from the folks who did the porting work, with the rights we need to put it out in OpenJDK as well as have it in our commercial source base. For that purpose alone, what you propose, i.e. the folks who did the work under the JRL, signing an SCA and giving the code back to Sun, would work.  

However, there is an additional wrinkle which is that in order to 
minimize the engineering work we would have to do to put the code out 
under OpenJDK, we will need to get the changes back as diffs against 
either the 6 Open or OpenJDK 7 code base.  This is because we have put 
an enormous engineering effort into scrubbing our code base for the 
OpenJDK releases, including lots of work with third party licenses, not 
making available proprietary code that we didn't have the rights to open 
source, and many other tasks.  The only way that we will be able to get 
the ported code out in OpenJDK is if we get the changes against  code 
that has already been through this process.  Neither the SCSL, nor the 
JRL gives developers the right to apply their changes (i.e. derivative 
works of our sources) to an open source code base.  So, we propose to 
create a letter which would allow you to do that, one time only, for 
the purpose of giving the code back to us for use in OpenJDK.  We 
believe that we can create such a letter in the next 2-3 weeks, and 
that we can keep it pretty simple. We will draft it to be specific to this project and these people, and you will not need to sign it. (but you will need to sign the SCA to cover giving the diffs back) We will consider doing this for other projects on a case by case basis.

Would this approach work for you and the 5 others on this list?  Please 
let me know(really Mark Reinhold, as I will be on vacation from Mar 31 - Apr 13) if you have any questions or concerns.

Carla



----- Original Message -----
From: Kurt Miller <kurt at intricatesoftware.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 12:01 pm
Subject: Re: BSD port
To: porters-dev at openjdk.java.net
Cc: Greg Lewis <glewis at eyesbeyond.com>, Dalibor Topic <dalibor.topic at googlemail.com>, Carla Schroer <Carla.Schroer at Sun.COM>


> On Tuesday 25 March 2008 1:12:20 pm Greg Lewis wrote:
>  > G'day Dalibor,
>  > 
>  > On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 04:58:28PM +0100, Dalibor Topic wrote:
>  > > On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 4:52 AM, Kurt Miller
>  > > <lists at intricatesoftware.com> wrote:
>  > > > Hi Carla,
>  > > >
>  > > >  I am very happy that Sun is embracing the idea of accepting 
> our work
>  > > >  into the code base and I'm looking forward to that happening. 
> I have been
>  > > >  working closely with Greg on this and will continue to help 
> move the process
>  > > >  along on our end too.  Would it be possible to move forward 
> with the BSD
>  > > >  porting project at the same time as the legal parts are worked 
> out?
>  > > 
>  > > I think that depends on how long sorting out the legal process 
> can be
>  > > expected to take.
>  > > If it takes much longer than a couple of weeks, then I'd prefer 
> to see
>  > > the legalese
>  > > sorted out first, to avoid being stuck with a frustrating situation
>  > > where we're still working
>  > > out legalese and singing of documents, and the project is stuck 
> on 'wait'.
>  > > 
>  > > Do you have an estimate of work that needs to be done on the BSD 
> side (and
>  > > Carla on Sun's side) and respective timelines? From my reading of 
> the
>  > > discussions
>  > > so far:
>  > > 
>  > > * Sun needs to draft a document for the BSD porters that have worked
>  > > under the JRL to sign (and the FreeBSD foundation)
>  > > * The BSD porters need to have a list of contributors that have worked
>  > > under the JRL
>  > > * The people and organizations on the list sign off the document
>  > > * The FreeBSD foundation's commercial license plays into this, as 
> well.
>  > >    Scope of the problem (if it is one) and its resolution is not
>  > > entirely clear to me yet.
>  > > 
>  > > Is there anything I've missed?
>  > 
>  > That pretty much matches my understanding of what we need to do to 
> resolve
>  > the licensing issues.  Then there is the actual port, but Kurt has 
> been
>  > working on that already :).
>  > 
>  > I think this will take longer than a couple of weeks due to the involvement
>  > of legal counsel both for Sun (in drafting the document) and 
> probably from
>  > the FreeBSD Foundation too (reviewing the document).  In each case 
> I don't
>  > believe this is a top priority of the respective legal teams and 
> will need
>  > some time to work through.  I'd be thrilled if Carla thinks 
> otherwise from
>  > the Sun perspective, but I believe its realistic for it to take a 
> couple of
>  > months rather than weeks to get through.
>  > 
>  > Its also difficult for me to estimate how long it will take to have 
> people
>  > sign the documents too.  I imagine that will vary from person to person
>  > and will depend to some extent on how simple the document is to understand
>  > and how long it will take to get any necessary clarifications on 
> what stuff
>  > means if its not.
>  > 
>  
>  The vast majority of the JRL based work was performed by six individuals:
>  
>  Kurt Miller <kurt at intricatesoftware.com>
>  Greg Lewis <glewis at eyesbeyond.com>
>  Jung-uk Kim <jkim at freebsd.org>
>  Christos Zoulas <christos at zoulas.com>
>  Arne H. Juul <arnej at pvv.ntnu.no>
>  Landon Fuller <landonf at bikemonkey.org>
>  
>  There were three one-time bug fix submissions from other individuals 
> and
>  13 changes that the FreeBSD Foundation has rights too.
>  
>  Question for Carla:
>  
>  Is it indeed necessary to come up with a new legal document for the JRL
>  work? Can't we just use the SCA for all the individual contributers? 
> Provided
>  the six of us sign the SCA, it leaves a very small number of changes 
> to deal with.
>  
>  I guess I'm looking for a way to move forward with the project 
> creation and
>  begin the process of reviewing the code and adjusting it to minimize 
> the
>  engineering effort. If it will take months for Sun and the FreeBSD Foundation
>  to work out an acceptable agreement for those 13 changes, we can initially
>  leave the changes out so other important work can continue in parallel.
>  
>  -Kurt
>