[lsb-discuss] LSB conf call notes for 2008-07-30
R P Herrold
herrold at owlriver.com
Mon Aug 11 11:00:42 PDT 2008
On Sat, 9 Aug 2008, Dalibor Topic wrote:
> On 08/08/08 21:28, R P Herrold wrote:
>> On Fri, 8 Aug 2008, Theodore Tso wrote:
>>> (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. :-)
>> So, exposing people to an NDA, and potentially unlimited
>> liability, and defense costs, in order to be be able to
>> test and demonstrate their distribution is LSB complaint is
>> fine?
> I believe Ted was joking, judging by the smiley he used -
> Sun hasn't done unspeakable things in the past,
Ted speaks for himself, as do I. I add no smiley, as the
issues seem real to me, and have seemed real to others in the
past
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-java-faq/ch6.html
Microsoft and Kodak may disagree as to 'unspeakable things
in the past'; I do not defend them (Microsoft nor Kodak) here.
but clearly Sun has lawyers and knows its way to the
courthouse in a Java license context.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-251401.html
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/10/07/HNsunkodaksettle_1.html
The presence of the cited clauses is my concern. If they are
removed or restricted, the factual landscape may change.
> and given that it has collaborated with the Java libre
> community (centered around gcj, kaffe, GNU Classpath and
> various community distributions) in the past around Java,
> OpenJDK, etc. it'd seem like a very unlikely, smiley worthy
> scenario.
Good works, as I see them, and on the road to competing on the
merits rather than through intellectual properly gamesmanship.
>> I think not. I think the LSB cannot in good conscience
>> place distributions in the line of fire, until and unless
>> the testing tool is not a 'spring gun'.
> I don't understand the term 'spring gun' - could you elaborate?
A first year law school concept, taught in 'Criminal Law' --
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-gun
for the nasty details.
The takeaway I had in mind is that one cannot knowingly set a
hazard on one's property, and expect to be ratified as
'blameless' when it later injures another. The analogy I was
striving for was that the LSB should not be in the business of
adding a path which adds risk (whether say, indemnification of
Sun, or (choosing a harmless example) an infringement of
another's patent [think the old RSA 'product of two primes'
encryption algorithm freed 6 Sept 2000]) to a proposed
certifying distribution.
Dalibor -- I'll be in touch separately as to some changes in
Sun's licenses, which I would hope could be considered, to
make Sun even more FOSS friendly.
-- Russ herrold
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