Where do I begin?

[Tony Kimball]

Quoth John D. Gwinner on Sun, 8 March:
: >If you ship your code over the internet to every pimply-faced Finnish
: >death-metal hacker wannabee that asks for it, you don't get to cry
: >"trade secret".
: 
: The issue isn't Kaffe, it's the Sun code.  I don't think Sun has shipped
: there code "all over".  

They have.  You don't have to pay a dime to download the JDK source
code.

: > Substantial steps to protect information are required
: >in order to claim proprietary rights under U.S. law.
: 
: ... to keep intellectual property (copyright, patent, or trade
: secret) rights, you've got to enforce them.  

I think you are somewhat confused.  In order to claim a trade secret,
you must first maintain secrecy.  JavaSoft has not maintained secrecy
with regard to the techniques of the published JVM code.  In order to
maintain proprietary rights of trademark, one must defend the
trademark against dilution.  

: The lawyers would tell Sun that
: they >>have<< to go after Kaffe.

If you were to call it FreeJava or something, yes, they would, in
order to maintain trademark rights.

: Thinking the way you are is deadly, it's a sure fired way to get slammed
: HARD.  I don't want to see that happen to Kaffe.

In my opinion this is baseless FUD.

: What's calling someone Humpty-Dumpty?  Relevant? 8-D

I have called no one Humpty Dumpty.  I alluded to Carroll's Humpty
Dumpty in order to illustrate a fallacy.  I believe it was this
character who insisted that words meant what he wished them to mean,
thereby rendering effective discourse very difficult.