[lsb-discuss] LSB conf call notes for 2008-07-30

Theodore Tso tytso at mit.edu
Fri Aug 8 10:19:27 PDT 2008


On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 05:19:00PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> > There could be a chicken-and-egg issue there; if you're required to call 
> > the JVM "java" by the TCK, then you won't pass the TCK until you do.

That's not a problem; you can install uncertified java anwyhere you
want.  The issue is you can't distribute it that way, and you can't
*call* it Java.

I'm not sure about distributing packages that in any way use the
four-letter 'J' word before they pass the certification test, and I
don't know about actually installing into a pathname such as
"/usr/bin/java"; I suspect that's a grey area, especially if the
package doesn't by default install into /usr/bin/java, except via an
/etc/alternates mechanism where the user explicitly asks that a
symlink get created from /usr/bin/java to kaffe.

> Hopefully they are smarter than that. If they are not then LSB should not
> mandate /usr/bin/java but /usr/bin/[somethingelse]. I would have hoped
> the ssh debacle years ago had educated folks on that danger.

I don't think it's a problem for us, because we will be mandating
something which passes the TCK (regardless of whether we integrate the
TCK into the LSB tests or whether we just ask the distributor to
assert that it passes the TCK).  The issue of what happens if some
distribution is installing kaffe or gcj as /usr/bin/java is not our
issues, since neither are certified Java distributions.  (And if Sun's
lawyers decide to go after those distributions with scarry cease-or-we-
sue-the-pants-off-of-you letters, particularly with non-commercial
distro's such as Gentoo, Debian, etc. --- the LSB wouldn't be
involved, and we can just stand back and watch the Slashdot bonfire
from a distance.  :-)

    	       	    	      	  	   	   - Ted



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