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Jini and the Sun Community Source License (SCSL)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the do-we-accept-it dept.

Julien Flack writes "JavaWorld has an interesting article on the Jini Community and its approach to open source. The Sun Community Source License (SCSL) "is an amalgam of open source principles and for-profit licensing models of the past." according to this article, which claims SCSL is in the spirit of ESR' Bazaar. "

2 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Distorted news coming out of the SCSL camp by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5
    We had a press release a few weeks ago from a Sun staffer who said that AOL/Netscape was considering using their development paradigm rather than Open Source. AOL/Netscape said they had no such plans and that the Sun staffer was talking out of place.

    Now, another Sun staffer claims Open-Source-like attributes when the SCSL is clearly not Open Source. More distortion.

    Does it seem that Sun is grasping at straws here? IBM has released a license for its Java compiler that is compliant with the Open Source Definition. A Java VM is available under the GPL from Transvirtual. Other Java components under bona-fide free software licenses are in process. You don't have to go to Sun for Java any longer.

    The most laughable part is that they feel the SCSL is necessary for real companies, and that those companies would not participate in Open Source. Yet, IBM, Apple, and many others belie that claim.

    I think Sun has learned some valuable lessons from the Linux development. They just haven't been able to accept them yet. When they do, the SCSL will go away.

    Thanks

    Bruce Perens

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  2. Why does Sun continue to shoot itself in the foot? by Greg+W. · · Score: 4

    So, like, I figured I should read this license to figure out what's up. I looked around a bit and eventually found it.

    The very first thing I noticed is that it's much, much more difficult for a layman to read and understand than the GNU GPL is. Now, everyone reading Slashdot knows how much controversy, confusion and debate the GPL has spawned -- imagine how much worse it would be if the GPL had been written in this incomprehensible style. The SCSL has no preamble which explains the intent of the license; and in order to make any sense of the text of the license, one must continually refer to the license's Glossary to figure out what is meant by all of the Capitalized Words. The SCSL is actually three or more separate licenses all concatenated together, and you have to read a meta-license to determine which of the sublicene(s) apply to you.

    So, while I didn't bother reading all of the license, I got the following out of it:

    • The software is only free (in the Debian Free Software Guidelines sense) for Research Use. You can't use the software freely if you actually have a job. (The Internal Deployment Use sub-license isn't free, either.)

    • For any other use (including commercial use), there are unacceptable limitations. You can't distribute modifications, and you can't disassemble or reverse engineer executables.

    The last thing I noticed, after I quit reading the license in disgust, was that there was a "session ID" appended to the URL. It seems that Sun wanted to track me as I browsed their site. Naughty Sun! (The actual URL that I got for the license when I finally got to it was http://www.sun.com/jini/licensing/scsl_jcp_v.1.6c_ web.html;$sessionid$E5HGUBAAAV2LDAMU VFZE3NQ -- but I snipped the "session ID" garbage from the end before adding the license link in the first paragraph.

    Does Sun really think that programmers are so bone-headed that we won't see right through all of their little tricks? We (or our predecessors) are the people who built the Internet! We aren't stupid, and we notice details. Your lawyers can't bury us with avalanches of mumbo-jumbo, because we programmers will eventually pick our way through the maze and find the rotten trash you dropped at the exit.

    By playing these petty little power games with us, Sun only continues to alienate us. This is why Java has met with such a cold reception among the technologically savvy user and programmer community -- Sun doesn't want to play by the rules.

    Well, just remember that the ultimate power is ours, not theirs. We have the power to disregard Sun's offerings until they come up with a way to work with us instead of against us. Sun isn't offering anything we need -- they're trying to grow a market. We've already got the tools and the talent to go our own direction, without Sun's poisoned candy. So while Sun keeps shooting itself in the foot and feeding fluff to the "HTML coders", we can go on with our lives.