On Sunday 30 December 2007, Craig White wrote: >On Sun, 2007-12-30 at 15:16 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: >> On Sunday 30 December 2007, Rahul Sundaram wrote: >> >Les Mikesell wrote: >> >> The bigger problem is distributing something that is not java >> >> compatable but executing it with the java name. Microsoft tried to >> >> promote an incompatible program that similarly fit their agenda with >> >> the java name and Sun successfully sued them over it. The >> >> fedora-shipped not-java program that executes with the java name does >> >> just as much damage and shouldn't be named java until it passes the >> >> compatibility tests. I'm surprised fedora's legal dept. allowed this >> >> abuse of a trademarked name. >> > >> >That's because trademark does not apply to filenames. Sun doesn't >> >consider classpath or GCJ as damage to Java in any way and has even used >> >the same license classpath originally had for their new openjdk effort. >> >IcedTea is a free and open source derivative of OpenJDK and included in >> >Fedora 8 by default and Sun has continued to use that as a prototype to >> >remove the binary encumbrances in their code. Once OpenJDK becomes >> >completely open source, Fedora will include that by default. >> > >> >Besides a compatible version of Java requires signing a test suite which >> >until recently came with onerous restrictions that has been lifted and >> >paved the way to better compatibility. >> > >> >http://www.press.redhat.com/2007/11/05/red-hat-helps-advance-open-source- >> >jav a/ >> > >> >Rahul >> >> Excellent news, Rahul. Unforch not in time for F8, F9 maybe? > >---- >you should have followed the links in the article which would have >brought you to... > >http://labs.jboss.com/community/interviews/sacha_sun.html > >which actually answers that and more > >Craig Maybe. The pointlessness of this thread seems lost on about half the posters though. Generally speaking, I'm in the same camp as Les, I just want it to work. If I have to go put a virtual quarter in the meter, so be it. All the political posturing in the world is of little or no use to the majority of us if it results in something being non-functional when it works flawlessly for the other 97% of the people on this planet running a windwoes install, legal or not. The only way to fix it is to follow William Shakespears advice, "First we kill all the lawyers", so the rest of us can sit down at the table and make our case. We both know that is not going to happen tomorrow. Now, will somebody PLEASE put either a wooden stake or a silver bullet through this threads heart and put it out of its misery, there are other things besides java to be discussed. Like what sort of political pressure can we bring to bear on broadcom to get some decent register level specs for their friggin radios? That, for those of us with laptops that came with such an abomination of an unsupported radio, is at least as important as this bit of slanguage called java. -- 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) A lifetime isn't nearly long enough to figure out what it's all about.
