Where do I begin?

[John D. Gwinner]

Tony:

>They have.  You don't have to pay a dime to download the JDK source
>code.

Do you have the URL?  They wanted $150,000 from me to download the source,
but addmitedly this was before the JNI, their policies may have changed.

Educational downloads don't count!

>: ... to keep intellectual property (copyright, patent, or trade
>: secret) rights, you've got to enforce them.
>
>I think you are somewhat confused.  In order to claim a trade secret,
>you must first maintain secrecy.  JavaSoft has not maintained secrecy
>with regard to the techniques of the published JVM code.

Isn't there a legal agreement you sign when you get access to the JVM code?
That agreement probably defines the source as a trade secret.  In any event,
to claim a trade secret infringement the secret has to be out; if it's still
secret, nobody is infringing it, correct?  So I'm not sure about your
statement on legal basis, but we can let that slide.  It's not my main
point.

> In order to
>maintain proprietary rights of trademark, one must defend the
>trademark against dilution.

And what about Copyright?

What I'm saying is that you have to enforce intellectual property rights, or
they are nothing.  Nit-picking the type of intellectual property isn't the
issue, the issue I was attempting to point out is that Sun *has* to protect
it's copyright (and other intellectual property), thus they are forced to go
after Kaffe to enforce the copyright.  Of course, lawyers will decide the
best techniques and the type of intellectual property rights they are
protecting.

If Sun let's Kaffe get away with incorporating parts of the Sun JVM into
it's source, then that opens the door to other JVM's to incorporate Kaffe
source.  Therefore, Sun must go after Kaffe to protect it's rights; it's
best not to give Sun the chance to do this.

>I have called no one Humpty Dumpty.  I alluded to Carroll's Humpty
>Dumpty in order to illustrate a fallacy.  I believe it was this
>character who insisted that words meant what he wished them to mean,
>thereby rendering effective discourse very difficult.


What you said actually was "You sound like Humpty-Dumpty." which is still
ad-hominem [sp?]
vice saying "I'm not sure we agree on the terms we're arguing about".

        == John ==