Sun to Change Java License for Linux

daria42 writes "It looks like the days of downloading Java every time you re-install a Linux box may be at an end. Reports are trickling in that Sun plans to alter the Java license to make it easier to bundle the JRE with Linux. From the article: 'Sun has faced calls several times to open-source Java, which advocates say would foster innovative open-source development. The company has resisted formally open-sourcing all of the Java software, but it has dramatically changed the development process around Java and changed licenses to make it easier to see Java source code.'"

Comments

Re:slackware has jre in 10.2?

[moro_666]

i think debian/ubuntu keep away from it because it has an uncomfortable license that doesn't match with the rest of the system ;)

most debian/gnulinux software is either gpl/lgpl or bsd (or alike) licensed, can be distributed without any restrictions just about anywhere. the license of java which you are supposed to read and accept while downloading and installnig, differs a lot from the "free as in beer" or "even more free than beer" licenses mentioned above.

for the commercial distros - no idea, but possibly the same issue.

Programs, getcha programs here!

[Chris Pimlott]

Section 5.3 of the Debian Java FAQ sums up the present licensing issues that prevent Debian from including Sun Java.

Re:Hard..

[/ASCII]

That's the fault of lazy packagers, not a problem with RPM itself. You can specify dependencies on a particular file (like /usr/bin/java) insesad of a package if you want to. And if that's not enough (e.g. if you want to allow people installing into /usr/local/ or /opt) you can write little dependency checking scripts at install-time. For example, this snippet makes sure a few X headers are present, regardless of if they are installed in /usr or /usr/X11:

%define xinclude %( if test -d /usr/X11R6/include; then echo /usr/X11R6/include; else echo /usr/include; fi )
Requires: %{xinclude}/X11/StringDefs.h, %{xinclude}/X11/Xlib.h

Re:slackware has jre in 10.2?

[zerblat]

The Binary Code License Agreement, under which Sun's Java implementations are licensed, only allow you to distribute their software if "[...]you do not distribute additional software intended to replace any component(s) of the Software[...]".

That means that you can't also distribute e.g. gcj or GNU Classpath. The license isn't exactly clear on whether it means that you can't distribute Sun's JRE together with gcj or whether distributing Sun's software means you can't distribute gcj at all -- ever. It's also not clear exactly what they mean by "software intended to replace any component(s) of the Software". In the worst case, that could apply to any software that performs the same function as some part of the JVM, the byte compiler, the class library etc. Does distributing Swing mean you can't distribute GTK?

Re:I'd Be Happy

[LarsWestergren]

There's no way to get OS-Specific permission settings on a File. For that reason if you try to archive some files in Java using an InputStream that takes Files, you'll lose the permissions settings on them and the files will restored with something both generic and useless like 644. They make a halfhearted attempt to address this in 1.5, but it's still useless.

It would appear that the only way to get disk space left on the volume is to open a file and start writing 1 byte at a time until you get an IO Exception.

These two are finally fixed in Mustang. I agree it has taken long though:

    Three new methods have been added to java.io.File class:

          getFreeSpace()
          getUsableSpace()
          getTotalSpace()
[...]

  Changing File Attributes:

  In Mustang the java.io.File API provides access to the file attributes for changing its readability, ability to write and ability to make it executable. Check out the following methods for playing around with file attributes:

  Changing readability: owner-only, owner or everybody
  Making it writable or read-only: owner-only, owner or everybody
  Making it executable or not executable: owner-only, owner or everybody