Sun's Tests

[Clark Evans]

Tim,

> No Sun and me don't seem to talk much (well they don't talk much ... or reply to any email). 
> If you have a handle on someome who does talk then please let me have the info.

They have completely avoided me as well.  I have been talking infomally with 
an attorney in the Sun/MS case, but I am not sure that he can help.  I asked 
him if he could find someone who was handling cleanroom efforts.

I am specifically worried about:
http://www.javasoft.com/products/jdk/1.1/docs/relnotes/SMICopyright.html
which says:

      Sun Microsystems, Inc.  (SUN) hereby grants to you a
      fully-paid, nonexclusive, nontransferable, perpetual,
      worldwide limited license (without the right to sublicense)
      under SUN's intellectual property rights that are essential
      to practice this specification.  This license allows and is
      limited to the creation and distribution of clean room
      implementations of this specification that (i) include a
      complete implementation of the current version of this
      specification without subsetting or supersetting, (ii)
      implement all the interfaces and functionality of the
      standard java.* packages as defined by SUN, without
      subsetting or supersetting, (iii) do not add any additional
      packages, classes or methods to the java.* packages (iv)
      pass all test suites relating to the most recent published
      version of this specification that are available from SUN
      six (6) months prior to any beta release of the clean room
      implementation or upgrade thereto, (v) do not derive from
      SUN source code or binary materials, and (vi) do not include
      any SUN binary materials without an appropriate and separate
      license from SUN.

(iv) is especially distrurbing.  In my own capacity, I asked Sun to 
please contact me regarding:

1.  How do I get the tests mentioed in (iv) for a cleanroom effort.
2.  How do I get a license from sun to include binary materials in a 
     cleanroom the distribution for libraries like JFC and RMI that
     are 100% pure.

If I hear from them or get a direct contact, I will forward the reference, if 
you would do the same for me this would be great.

I will forward your e-mail to the attorney in question.  If he decides to 
respond to you this is his choice, however he is only working on 
the Microsoft contract.  (I hope he does)

In general, I think it would be good for sun to be able to point at the 
Kaffe.org and say "See Microsoft... here we have good people out there,
respecting our test suites and licenses.. that haven't even signed."
So they should be very helpful to Kaffee.  

Nice to talk!

I have a bunch of Kaffee questions for you... hopefully this legal shit will
be a breeze so that JOS/Kaffe can have an easy time of it.

Cheers,

Clark


Clark Evans
Tel:  (203) 316-3527
clark.evans at gartner.com

Disclaimer:  The opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily 
those of my employer.  In particular,  I am a not a research analyst and 
this correspondence does indicate any position of  The Gartner Group.