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JBoss Queries Apache Geronimo Code Similarity

Posted by simoniker on from the tomahawks-at-dawn dept.

Kanagawa writes "This morning, Jim Jagielski, Exec. V.P. and Secretary of the Apache Software Foundation, announced on the geronimo-dev mailing list that 'the ASF received a letter from JBoss's lawyers regarding... the similarity of code between [J2EE implementation] Geronimo and JBoss.' The letter is available in PDF. According to the letter, similarities were noticed back in July, and haven't been fixed."

6 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Any point? by henc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not into this case, but at a first glance it seem to me that Geronimo really is just what JBoss is, right ? - So what's the point in remaking it? JBoss is already free? (LGPL!)

    henc

  2. XLevel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The first exhibit seems to be originally derived from:

    http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-log4j/ ex amples/customLevel/XLevel.java

    which is apache licensed in the first place.

  3. When lawyers present code in documents... by Kentamanos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Check out the source code on page 8. Since when is the copyright symbol allowable in Java syntax?

  4. Re:Even the variable names are the same by Delirium+Tremens · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Good try, but no, really. First of all, CELLPADDING only appears in the jBoss part of the diff, not in Geronimo. Secondly, that's how you are supposed to specify the padding for cells in an HTML table. So, if Geronimo had decided to use an HTML table in their javadoc with cell padding, they would have had to use CELLPADDING. But all that is irrelevant since they didn't.

  5. Well DUH!!! by ChaseTec · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Did anyone not see this coming? And if you didn't here's why you should have:

    Mark Fleury's original response to Apache Geronimo
    As our customers know, we are a business, a serious one and we seriously believe in and defend "professional open source". That includes legal protection of IP. Make no mistakes, JBoss will AGGRESIVELY defend its copyright and LGPL license.

    And from the Elba website
    Think of Elba as a latticework for Geronimo--and as a shield to buffer the Geronimo codebase and CVS repository from any LGPL code. As Geronimo is built, its code will replace the code from Elba, bit by bit until there's nothing left in Elba at all. At that time, Elba will cease to exist and only Geronimo will remain; we'll have a big party and you're all invited.

    So if Geronimo is being developed as outlined at the Elba website then they'd have to have the exact same method signatures....

    --
    My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
  6. Not copied? by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Looking at the code as a programmer, some things stand out:

    1. The "copying" JBoss claims doesn't fit. There's differences in braces, keywords and other things that wouldn't be accounted for by automatic reformatting of code. I can't see a programm who's copying code directly going back in and doing that kind of editing. I'd expect braces to be maintained, for example, yet in several places they aren't.
    2. The similar names are obvious names for types, variables and functions. Given the same spec to start from, without having seen the JBoss code at all, I'd pick the same names.
    3. The places they cite as having code-structure similarity are very simple. Frankly, it looks to me like there's only one sane way to write that code.
    It can't hurt to do a check, but I suspect JBoss is seeing copying where there's just only one obvious way to do something and most programmers, working independently, will make basically the same set of choices for that code.