Lutris, Close Source, And The Open Source Community

sohp writes "Back in mid-September Slashdot ran the story "Lutris Closes Enhydra Source" regarding that company's decision to retract its open source licensing terms. Now George C. Hawkins has reconstructed the pre-closed source reality and discusses it at How Lutris betrayed the Open Source Community . Short summary: blaming Sun was a smokescreen. Interesting use of web archive sites, too." There's definitely a lot of strong feelings against Lutris in the linked piece, but there's also a lot of validity as well.

Comments

Can someone explain the dependence on Sun code?

[The Pim]

Plenty of free software implements proprietary standards (Mesa, Lesstif, all the *nix utilities in GNU, really). This has typically not been a legal problem, so I don't understand why implementing J2EE might be a legal problem. Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

My understanding is that J2EE comes from Sun in basicall three parts: specification and other documentation in natural language; the Java API; and a sample implementation. I think these parts are fairly distinct. I want to know which of these is the "problem".

Obviously, every implementor must make use of the documentation. Normally, this does not taint an implementation, but Lutris claims that "reading the specification for J2EE forces the reader to agree to the SCSL". The J2EE specification license I can find doesn't say that. Though it is fairly restrictive, it doesn't seem to prohibit a free implementation. So is the specification a problem or not?

The JBoss response says that JBoss uses "seven jars" from Sun. I'm guessing these jars define the API, ie, they consist entirely of interfaces, abstract classes, and (maybe) trivial classes. Is this necessary? Most free implementations of proprietary API's include their own header files as free software. Does Sun claim a copyright on the API itself? What is the legal status of such claims, since there is basically only one way to express an API? Or did JBoss simply choose not to write their own versions?

Finally, does Enterprise Enhydra use essentially the same Sun classes as JBoss, or do they borrow some of the sample implementation as well? Do they claim that their commercial nature, or some pre-existing agreement with Sun, makes their situation different?

Thanks if you can untangle this.