Improving Java for Linux

John D. Gwinner gwinner at northnet.org
Wed Nov 5 21:49:55 PST 1997


Nelson:

> I meant to ask why doesn't Sun lift some of the restrictions on the
> *source license* for the VM. Binary licensing is a totally different
> issue, I'm sorry I didn't make myself more clear. 

Sun's very direct position, from three different people from Sun and then
JavaSoft, was that a source licence IS a license for distribution of the
binaries.  To redistribute the VM *in* a product, even if you never
compile the source code, required a source licensed.  Believe me, I had
that clarified.  

If you write your app totally IN Java, that's different.  Then binary
distribution is free.  Source was also free for Academic licenses.  Not so
for commercial licenses, even small / tiny shareware developers.

Now, as I mentioned, I *think* that's changed recently.  Nice of Sun to
let me, a registered developer with cooperative agreement's and NDA's,
know.  

		== John ==



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