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J2SE 5.0 Source Code Bundles Now Available

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the compile-again-run-anywhere dept.

madcowbrit writes "J2SE 5.0 Source code bundles are now available with SCSL and the new and exciting Java Research license! Coders have been asking for Java J2SE source code access under new terms. The new Java Research license gives people more access and options to work with the Java J2SE source code."

17 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. If for Research... by idonotexist · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you use the code for "Research Use" means research, evaluation, or development for the purpose of advancing knowledge, teaching, learning, or customizing the Technology or Modifications for personal use. Research Use expressly excludes use or distribution for direct or indirect commercial (including strategic) gain or advantage then you have the right to [r]eproduce, create Modifications of, and use the Technology alone, or with Modifications. That's according to the license. If they required certain classes, that's another story, but according to the license, you could change that?

    --
    "There ought to be limits to freedom"
    1. Re:If for Research... by YetAnotherAnonymousC · · Score: 4, Informative

      Another thing to remember is that IBM actually has written much of the j2se code. Who knows what the exact details of that license agreement are? I suspect that Sun (same goes for IBM) may not even have the full legal rights to unilaterally open source the j2se even if they decided they wanted to do it tomorrow.

    2. Re:If for Research... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      It's not ridiculous. There's a legal concept of "inevitable disclosure" which means if you work on X at company A and then go work on X at company B, it's inevitable that you will end up using some of company A's trade secrets. However, it "decays" over time, so if you work on something else for a few years in between then you should be OK.

  2. Re:The big question is ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yep you can, try it out yourself. You will still need the normal JDK for the source code for the J2SE API (the src.zip included) for it to be fully functional though.

  3. I STAND CORRECTED!!! by molarmass192 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The binaries are only fonts, sounds, and icons ... you DO get all the source code. I'm friggen impressed now!

    --

    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  4. not open at all by geg81 · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can find Sun's license here. Sun admits that it isn't an open source license, they are just trying to argue that it is somehow better than open source.

    Because Debian is forced to classify software into open source or not, Debian has had to look at this in some detail, and they concluded that it was not open source.

    1. Re:not open at all by vegetasaiyajin · · Score: 3, Informative

      The Java platform cannot be legally reimplemented without meeting Sun's compatibility requirements and without obtaining licenses for several of Sun's patents

      Obtaining the license is no problem.
      From the Java language specification:

      Sun Microsystems, Inc. (SUN) hereby grants you a fully-paid, nonexclusive, nontransferable, perpetual, worldwide limited license (without the right to sublicense) under SUN's intellectual property rights that are essential to practice this specification. This license allows and is limited to the creation and distribution of clean room implementations of this specification.

      Your implementation has to pass the compatibility tests, though.

      There are several clean room implementations of Java (GCJ, Kaffe, TowerJ, Jeode and others I forget). I don't know which ones paid Sun though.
      I think you have to pay if you want to use the trademark name Java.

      --

      My heart is pure, but make no mistake, it's pure evil
  5. There's an IBM JVM... by Phil+John · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...that used to be called Jalapeno that bootstrapped itself with IIRC less than 200 lines of C, just to start the process. After that, everything to do with the JVM was java itself.

    --
    I am NaN
    1. Re:There's an IBM JVM... by Calroth · · Score: 3, Informative

      "...that used to be called Jalapeno that bootstrapped itself..."

      Just to let people know, it's now called Jikes RVM and is still under active development. "RVM" is a Research Virtual Machine, which is like a standard VM, only researchers do weird, cutting-edge things to it (advanced garbage collection, advanced runtime optimisations). The idea is, one day, the standard JVM will pick up these changes.

      Not related to the Jikes compiler.

  6. Re:That sure is 'open'... by Hollins · · Score: 4, Informative
    This should tell you something - only a license that plans to restrict your rights in some unpleasant way requires a clickthrough. Seriously - I always get the willies from having to clickthrough to accept anything.

    That's interesting, because the last time I installed firefox, it required a clickthrough acceptance of the GPL. I didn't get any willies at all.

  7. Re:how open ? by k98sven · · Score: 3, Informative
    Quoting Dalibor Topic (one of the leads on Kaffe, the free JVM)

    Open Source Definition vs. SCSL

    Free Redistribution

    Nope.

    Source Code

    Doesn't allow free redistribution, so redistribution in source code fails, too.

    Derived Works

    Nope.

    Integrity of The Author's Source Code

    Doesn't allow free distribution of separate modifications either.

    No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

    I guess it passes that one, yay!

    No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

    Nope. Explicitely limits fields of endeavor to research, commercial use, or internal use.

    Distribution of License

    Nope. The TCK license comes with what's effectively a NDA.

    License Must Not Be Specific to a Product

    I guess it passes that one, yay!

    License Must Not Restrict Other Software

    Nope. Once you've agreed to SCSL, you can't distribute non-compliant software. So you couldn't redistribute kaffe, gcj, or even more up-to-date versions of Xerces if they break tests in the TCK.

    License Must Be Technology-Neutral

    Nope. It's a click-wrap license. It even has a pointless [ACCEPT] [REJECT] at the bottom


    Total: 2 out of 10.

    In summary, it's not open source. It's not even close.

  8. Re:Self compilation by Espectr0 · · Score: 3, Informative

    gcc is able compile self. Does java compile itself?

    Yes it does

    --
    Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
  9. Re:not open at all - Not the same license!!! by Richard_Davies · · Score: 2, Informative

    Please bother to read the article or at least follow the links in the headline. The licence you refer to is the SCSL. The article refers to a new licence, the JRL. I won't bother putting in the link because it is liseted above and anyone reading this can go and follow it as you should have done.

    Be aware that sun now offers its Java source code under two licences, one of which was not ordained by the FSF an an open source licence (SCSL) and the other (JRL) which has yet to be judged (although I strongly suspect it will get on the FSF's list either).

  10. Re:Does it contain the platform specific code as w by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2, Informative

    It sounds like you were looking at the class library source code instead of the VM source code. It's all there; you just have to know where to look.

  11. MOD DOWN - wrong license by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The SCSL is not the JRL, so your message is off-topic and misleading.

  12. Re:The big question is ... by javax · · Score: 2, Informative

    There actually is an open source JVM from IBM, jikesrvm..

  13. Re:Version naming?? by lostchicken · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sun has this nasty habit of somehow getting themselves stuck in a rut with a particular major version number. For example, Solaris started on version 2.x and got all the way up to 2.6 something like 10 years later. With version 2.7, they kinda just said 'fuck it, marketing can call it Solaris 7', and they did. But to this day, "uname -a" on a Solaris 9 box says "SunOS turing 5.9 Generic_112233-05 sun4u sparc". (SunOS 5.0 was Solaris 2.0. Don't think too hard about it;-) )

    I guess they decided that they were never going to release Java 2 Version 2.0, so they decided to call it Java 5.

    --
    -twb