On Wed, Feb 01, 2006 at 04:09:00PM -0500, Ken Larson wrote: > Hi, > > I have read the FAQ on contributing to GNU classpath, and I am still > left with a question: > > Let's say for example standard Java defines some constant like > FileFormat.BINARY. The Javadoc does not specify the value of this > constant. I want to write a replacement for FileFormat, so I write a > program > > System.out.println(FileFormat.BINARY) and run it against Sun's > implementation. I find out that the value is 1, and I put that in my > implementation. > > Is this legit for the purposes of contribuing to classpath? In that case, I'd say yes. The number 1 is not copyrightable, and you need the correct value for interoperability. With recent J2SE API documentation, Sun publishes constants and serialization layouts, so I'd hope that the question is moot these days. In general, it depends on the information. If, say, the Java bytecode format was ammended to include annotations for the source code each bytecode in a class corresponds to, for better debugger support, and there was an javax.bytecode.annotations.debugger API to work on those annotations, then harvesting the annotations programmatically would not result in something one could safely put into GNU Classpath to quickly finish the missing classes. :) Sometimes the values Sun uses also don't make sense outside Sun's world, for example when selecting a default provider for some javax.xml SPI. That's pretty runtime dependant. cheers, dalibor topic > > > Thanks, > > > Ken Larson, > Larson Technologies, Inc. > >
