[kaffe] System code and kaffe

Dalibor Topic robilad at kaffe.org
Fri Feb 27 08:44:02 PST 2004


Hi Berlin,

Berlin Brown wrote:
> Of course, I think kaffe will benefit if SUN java goes open source.  That
> would be fun.

Depends on the terms and conditions of the code. OpenSource is not 
enough for kaffe, it needs to be a GPL-compatible license. [1]

Fortunately, we don't really *need* Sun's code, we can get there with 
our own class libraries. It would be more important if Sun opened up 
access to their TCK, made JCP more accesible to free software 
developers, removed the subclassing restrictions, and made it clear they 
will not pull a SCO anyone. Of course, the last bit is best served if 
they released code under a GPL-compatible license. But as I said, we 
don't really need their code, kaffe and gcj (and others) are getting 
along quite well on their own terms.

So don't hesitate to hack on kaffe, you can always wait for Sun to open 
source their code in parallel ;)

cheers,
dalibor topic

[1] It would be also helpful if Sun changed their license on the 
documentation to something less draconian. And maybe made clear whether 
the people exposed to the JDK sources through a debugger (for example) 
are not automatically tainted.





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