Craig White wrote:
On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 12:53 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
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).
Fedora licensing guidelines does not allow software with non-free or
patent issues and regardless of how many use it or not, Fedora wouldn't
include it. Btw, the java portions are old news since Fedora 8 includes
IcedTea, derivative of OpenJDK which is Sun Java under GPL+classpath
exception. Very few people use the Java related portions really.
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.
I am not speaking for anyone but myself anywhere unless explicitly
stated. It isn't "perfectly legal" to use patent infringing software if
you are in a region that enforces patents on software.
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.
I don't see anybody anywhere from Red Hat or Fedora telling you in any
official capacity what to do with non-free software. I have seen people
explain many times what they do or what constraints they operate under
which is entirely different.
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.
Again, end users can and have been sued for patent infringement before
but the exclusion of Sun Java had nothing to do with patents and
everything to do with copyright licenses which are getting fixed.
http://www.press.redhat.com/2007/11/05/red-hat-helps-advance-open-source-java/
Rahul
