On Wednesday 07 November 2007, Rahul Sundaram wrote: >Gene Heskett wrote: >> I haven't really exercised it (2.3.0) all that much but what I've done was >> done exactly as I expected. Eg, it Just Worked(TM). >> >> To Rahul: Are there concerns re patents that make RH pull stuff out of >> OOo? > >There was a mix of stuff. Some Java portions used to not work well with >GCJ. There was concern over patents in other features. Sun has a patent >cross licensing agreement with Microsoft that makes them immune to these >problems so it might be that they wouldn't care but if affects everybody >else including end users who don't use Staroffice (which gets some kind >of patent license as a commercial product). > >Rahul In defense of that, it might be enlightening to take a survey and see how many folks try to use the java tools fedora supplies vs folks that dl and install their java directly from sun. I'm in the probably 95% column that did that. And it Just Works(TM). That's not saying you (speaking as RH) are wrong, but that is how many will perceive it, they somehow expecting RH to shoulder the legal liability for that and which is not at all realistic to ask. It appears to us that it is perfectly legal for us to do so however, so we don't always accept that condescension quietly. The only place where I have a personal distaste is that when we do that, then RH/Fedora seems to want to say that we are the sinners in this nearly religious perfect adherence to the GPL. As users, we just want it to work, and TBT it does. Can you imagine the hoorah that would be created if sun (or M$ for that matter) were to go after each of us JRE downloaders individually? I suspect that would ultimately cause the demise of 'the big bad wolf' regardless of the security pass on the left breast pocket's issuer, and they damned well know it. I'd think it would also be laughed out of court as entrapment because its freely offered for download, fully customized to run on linux. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The universe is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering. -- Chinese proverb
