On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 11:36 -0400, Stuart Ballard wrote: > On 6/22/07, Mark Wielaard <mark@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Thanks and indeed we should. So if anybody else has any scenarios and > > would like feedback then please ping me and I try to sneak them in the > > conversation I will have tomorrow. I don't know how much time I have and > > there is already a list of legal/policy issues to go through with > > respect to classpath/openjdk but I can always try. > > Do you have this list of issues in an easily-postable form? I think > that if so seeing the list would be helpful to the discussion, both > from the perspective of avoiding duplication, and because the items > already on the list might inspire someone to think of a new one. Yeah, but we are not really looking for new trouble :) More for solutions to specific concrete issues. I am in the train now and don't have access to the archives, but see Dalibor's message on classpath-patches [RFC: AWT Peers update] and my previous message on this list [Meeting with the Bobs (legal Q/A)] (which also had a list of issues we are not exploring at the moment). Most of this isn't really that interesting it is mostly boring legal bureaucratic checking all terms and conditions of all the openjdk stuff (see the huge list of 40+ external code all with slightly different conditions in THIRD_PARTY_README of openjdk) and determining which combinations of all those licenses are compatible with GPLv2, GPLv3 and the exception statements. Double checking the files not mentioned in the THIRD_PARTY_README, most of which are fine and the few files having "wrong" notices have already been reported to Sun and are in the process to be fixed (policy here is to first inform Sun to check whether it is a misunderstanding or oversight). Then there is the procedure to follow if people would want to have a grantback of rights as allowed under FSF contracts (people for who this is an issue are already in contact with me), how such grantbacks interact with the SCA that Sun requires, hopefully get some advise on the SCA and how strong it is for the community to trust Sun to participate nicely in the future, whether gpl +exception packages from classpath could be distributed together with the openjdk code, procedures to follow when distributing such split-up classpath, how to orderly upgrade to GPLv3 (plus exception) next month as the GNU Classpath, GCC/GCJ and some of the Kaffe hackers have said they wanted, but what are the implications if Sun decides not to upgrade openjdk (since they explicitly choose GPLv2-only, but with the classpath-exception for large parts of the core class libraries), what are the implications for Apache compatibility, etc. When all those issues are answered and/or advise is given how to make such issues easy to resolve then there is a second phase of defining policy based on the outcome (note that the SFLC legal people can analyze and give advise on legal matters, but they don't have a legal-magic-wand to just make any issue just disappear if it comes up). But that is then up to the individual contributors, the FSF, Sun, and the various projects. It is important to note that the FSF is slightly restricted by the 140+ companies and individuals that it has signed contracts with over the years about their contributions to GNU Classpath and GCJ (saying their contribution will always remain free software) and Sun is slightly constraint by their demand to have a bit more rights than the community at large to only include contributions to openjdk which they can explicitly turn proprietary to hand over to their "partners". Neither is super flexible and they have somewhat different goals, which is why I explicitly asked the SFLC to give advise both to the FSF/GNU project and to the larger GNU Classpath & Friends community/projects. One last note is that everybody is super busy pushing out GPLv3 end of this month. And that although Eben has been briefed about the ongoing stuff by the SFLC lawyers who are helping us, this meeting was more of a chance since he happened to come through the Netherlands. I don't know how much time he has, or if I can get more out of him than an acknowledgment of the issues. But I thought I should at least try to get to talk to him to get a sense of how quickly we can move forward with this all. Cheers, Mark
