Possible licensing issue with JavaSoft?

[spinny]

On Thu, 30 Oct 1997, David Scott wrote:

> 
> On Wed, 29 Oct 1997 benjamin at marimba.com wrote:
>  
> > I remember a tale of someone who put a Java logo on his homepage in 
> > the very early days of the language, to show his support.  But then 
> > Sun threatened to sue him...  I think that Sun's legal department has 
> > been quite stupidly aggressive in the past, and is probably still so.  
> > Whether or not they stand a chance of winning, they might try.  
> > Perhaps they were just bored back then, in which case we're all safe 
> > for now ;)
> 
> My take on this issue is this: Sun is being very careful in defining its
> legal position with regard to Java(tm) because of Microsoft, whom Sun
> doesn't want mucking around with Java the way they muck around with
> everything else. The thing is, for them to defend their turf against the
> Evil Empire, they have to enforce some silly-looking boilerplate even
> among more friendly folk. 
> 
> For example, it appears that O'Reilly Associates has recently heard from
> Sun's lawyers about using the Java name without the (tm) on the covers of
> their excellent Java books. This is particularly bizarre when you consider
> how Java-friendly ORA really is. 
> 
> For the time being, I think Sun should be given very wide berth on this
> issue, until things sort themselves out a bit.  I find their lawsuit
> against Microsoft very interesting.  One way to support them is simply to
> play along. 
> 
> David Scott
> Montreal
> 

I couldn't agree more.  It would be awful if they sat around and judged
the individual intentions of all the various organizations that are in
some way involved in Java development and then, based on these
calculations, decided which organizations to prosecute.  A unified
structure works much better.  And this is a crucial juncture in the life
of Java. I do wonder how things might be different without the spectre of
Microsoft lurking about. 

garner