SCSL prohibits you from distributing covered code to anyone who is not a SCSL licensee, and "distributing" includes even having an open cvs repository. That means everyone in your "open source" community has to be a SCSL licensee - which sounds doable, until you realize that SCSL licensees agree not to deploy except compliant covered code - i.e., tested and certified. So you can be open source, but you can't build and run it. I certainly would not
contribute to a project where I couldn't use what
I contributed. So then should Lutris have given away compliant covered code, only publishing what's tested? So I guess you're right, if Lutris published code that had been tested and certified and people agreed to SCSL terms and
all the code was available to anyone who'd signed SCSL - I guess that's possible. But it's not
compatible with the Mozilla license that it was
under. As for Tomcat, it's hardly an app server,
though 4.0 has some way cool stuff in it. To equate them is to ignore the difference in engineering effort between tomcat and the multi-thousand-dollar app servers. jBoss has a huge number of good developers, and the quality is still not commercial grade by any means.
Don't get me wrong. Lutris may be using this
to cover their retreat, but that doesn't mean
they weren't forced into it or that Sun is using
SCSL/JCP as a way of containing the open source movement as applied to Java.
"It's the best medium ever invnted for those who knwo nothing to inform those who know less"
Every J2EE vendor - BEA, et al - has signed some
variant of SCSL as applied to the J2EE technology.
Ask Sun if there are any alternatives.
I don't think the issue is Lutris. Lutris probably tried to get the license and failed; after all, they'd be in a much better position if they were open-source and J2EE; that would be a completely unique market position.
Per Sun, if you read the J2EE spec,
you agree to do nothing unless you license J2EE from them. SCSL is the only J2EE license, and Sun won't let you sign it unless they're sure your open-source (good) won't conflict with theirs
(bad). Sun is the only game in town because to interoperate with them, you've got to use their API's, under license. Get the gospel? With the JCP, they lock up all the priests. So we're back to the cathedral, with Sun in charge of gospel and clergy alike. Sun squelches competition in enterprise Java software by reaching backwards with the JCP process and viral licenses that require more licensing to deploy and forwards with SCSL's trademark-based scheme (can't deploy without the trademark; need the license to get the trademark). You want viral? Check out the J2EE spec license, JAXP 1.1, heck, even JavaHelp - they all say you can't implement javax.* namespace without getting a license from Sun. The only exceptions are the special Apache licenses which are designed to get us all onto java based two-tier systems. But Sun would not let lutris do this. Why? My bet is that Lutris had the open-source BUSINESS MODEL of giving it away and making money off services and add-on's. That goes completely against Sun's license-based scheme for using app-server vendors to reach into the pockets of developers. I doubt any vendor with netscape's razors-and-blades model would get a license from Sun, because that would hurt Sun and the other licensees too much. Sun prefers value to be in IP that can be licensed (and contained); they can't reasonable reach into services and other revenues. Licensing law is worse that copyright and patent in this regard; at least for those, there are objective standards. Here, Sun can impose any standard it wishes in its "licenses", even if the only thing it's licensing is the opportunity to play the game. At least when MS was setting de facto standards, they had the burden of delivering a quality implementation that beat the others in the marketplace first.
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SCSL prohibits you from distributing covered code to anyone who is not a SCSL licensee, and "distributing" includes even having an open cvs repository. That means everyone in your "open source" community has to be a SCSL licensee - which sounds doable, until you realize that SCSL licensees agree not to deploy except compliant covered code - i.e., tested and certified. So you can be open source, but you can't build and run it. I certainly would not contribute to a project where I couldn't use what I contributed. So then should Lutris have given away compliant covered code, only publishing what's tested? So I guess you're right, if Lutris published code that had been tested and certified and people agreed to SCSL terms and all the code was available to anyone who'd signed SCSL - I guess that's possible. But it's not compatible with the Mozilla license that it was under. As for Tomcat, it's hardly an app server, though 4.0 has some way cool stuff in it. To equate them is to ignore the difference in engineering effort between tomcat and the multi-thousand-dollar app servers. jBoss has a huge number of good developers, and the quality is still not commercial grade by any means. Don't get me wrong. Lutris may be using this to cover their retreat, but that doesn't mean they weren't forced into it or that Sun is using SCSL/JCP as a way of containing the open source movement as applied to Java.
"It's the best medium ever invnted for those who knwo nothing to inform those who know less" Every J2EE vendor - BEA, et al - has signed some variant of SCSL as applied to the J2EE technology. Ask Sun if there are any alternatives.
I don't think the issue is Lutris. Lutris probably tried to get the license and failed; after all, they'd be in a much better position if they were open-source and J2EE; that would be a completely unique market position. Per Sun, if you read the J2EE spec, you agree to do nothing unless you license J2EE from them. SCSL is the only J2EE license, and Sun won't let you sign it unless they're sure your open-source (good) won't conflict with theirs (bad). Sun is the only game in town because to interoperate with them, you've got to use their API's, under license. Get the gospel? With the JCP, they lock up all the priests. So we're back to the cathedral, with Sun in charge of gospel and clergy alike. Sun squelches competition in enterprise Java software by reaching backwards with the JCP process and viral licenses that require more licensing to deploy and forwards with SCSL's trademark-based scheme (can't deploy without the trademark; need the license to get the trademark). You want viral? Check out the J2EE spec license, JAXP 1.1, heck, even JavaHelp - they all say you can't implement javax.* namespace without getting a license from Sun. The only exceptions are the special Apache licenses which are designed to get us all onto java based two-tier systems. But Sun would not let lutris do this. Why? My bet is that Lutris had the open-source BUSINESS MODEL of giving it away and making money off services and add-on's. That goes completely against Sun's license-based scheme for using app-server vendors to reach into the pockets of developers. I doubt any vendor with netscape's razors-and-blades model would get a license from Sun, because that would hurt Sun and the other licensees too much. Sun prefers value to be in IP that can be licensed (and contained); they can't reasonable reach into services and other revenues. Licensing law is worse that copyright and patent in this regard; at least for those, there are objective standards. Here, Sun can impose any standard it wishes in its "licenses", even if the only thing it's licensing is the opportunity to play the game. At least when MS was setting de facto standards, they had the burden of delivering a quality implementation that beat the others in the marketplace first.