Sun's tests

[Magnus Y Alvestad]

As you can see below, I contacted Sun concerning our discussion.  The
answer looks good to me.  Feel free to forward this to others.

------- Start of forwarded message -------
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 16:48:15 -0800
From: Jim.Mitchell at Eng.Sun.COM (Jim Mitchell)
Message-Id: <199711130048.QAA08745 at cambridge.eng.sun.com>
To: magnus at ii.uib.no
Subject: Your question about JavaSoft's open process
Cc: kl at nts.no, mhe at mchp.siemens.de, jim.mitchell at Eng.Sun.COM,
        lisa.poulson at Eng.Sun.COM
Content-Type: text

Dear Magnus,

Thank you for your e-mail question regarding test suites. The clause in
the license agreement that is in the front of our specifications
published in the Addison-Wesley Series "...from the Source" says that
clean room implementations would have to pass any test suites that
*are* available from SUN. At this time, no test suites are available.
Therefore, clean room implementors do not have to pass any conformance
tests at this time.

We have also stated in our PAS application documents that clean room
implementations that are based on a resulting International Standard
for the Java platform will not have to pass any conformance tests from
SUN.

We use our conformance test suite ourselves to make sure that new
implementations of the Java platform are conforming, and then we require
that our licensees pass those same tests once they have ported and
tuned our reference implementation. When they pass the tests, then they
are allowed to use the "Java Compatible" brand.  Of course, we cannot
and do not enforce any such rule on clean room implementations.

I hope this clarifies our position adequately for you.

--Jim Mitchell
  V.P., Technology & Architecture
  Sun Microsystems, Inc., JavaSoft Division

> From magnus at ii.uib.no Wed Nov 12 02:41:52 1997
> To: lisa.poulson at Eng
> Cc: kl at nts.no, Martin Herdieckerhoff <mhe at mchp.siemens.de>
> Subject: Regarding open Java process.
> From: Magnus Y Alvestad <magnus at ii.uib.no>
> Content-Length: 958
> X-Lines: 23
>
> Hi.
>
> I would appreciate a quick response to this, as I've been charged with
> deciding the norwegian position on the new PAS vote - and the deadline
> is tomorrow.
>
> The latest weeks, I've been trying to determine how open the Java
> process really is.  One of the groups that I've been in touch with is
> the Jolt Project.  Some of people developing Jolt programs (kore,
> kaffe, guava ..) seem the be under the impression that it's very hard
> to write free java software because of this clause in your license:
>
> .. (iv) pass all test suites relating to the most recent published
> version of this specification that are available from SUN six (6)
> months prior to any beta release of the clean room implementation or
> upgrade thereto, ..
>
> Could you please let me know how developers of free software can get
> access to these test suites, and at what costs?  Also, please let me
> know in what way these procedures will or may change if Java becomes
> an ISO standard.
>
> -Magnus
>

------- End of forwarded message -------

-Magnus