Jim Driscoll's Blog

We're not going to sue you

In my last blog's comments, Chris Mahan posited that Sun would send lawyers after a hapless coder, nashing their tiny little sharp teeth. Since this isn't generally how things work - I thought I'd blog a bit on this here:

How many times have you seen a discussion on mailling lists, forums or blogs which says "If I do that with my source code, company X is going to sue me". Well, relax. The odds of you being successfully sued as an individual for something you do in code is probably below the odds of death by beesting.
Let me explain:

I've been at Sun for 9 years now, and working in the Java Software group (by whatever name it's called) for that entire time. During that time, we've tried to keep compatibility going through a variety of legal means, including use licenses and contracts. You might think that this means that we've been engaged in alot of lawsuits. With one major exception, we haven't. Now: why is this?

• Lawsuits are expensive, and usually not profitable
• Lawsuits are a distraction from your real business, which in our case is building computer solutions for customers
• Lawsuits usually generate megatons of negative PR for the company bringing them, especially when they're asymetrical (i.e., directed at the little guy)

Now, there's always the degenerative exception, like SCO. Let's talk about that last.

First, let's discuss what usually happens when we see someone doing something that violates our licenses. I have two examples in mind, from my personal experience.

In the first (and this happened more than once), we found our entire source code base published on the internet by someone who wasn't us (this was pre-Open Source days). Now, this was clearly violating our license, no question. It's also rude. Guess what we did? If you're thinking anything to do with lawyers, you're wrong. One of our engineers sent an email, the content of which was something like: "Um, did you know you were doing this?". The answer: "Ohmygodohmygod! I didn't know! I'm very sorry it's fixed now". (The person had intended it for an internal website, and had misconfigured the webserver. Again, this has happend more than once.) And that was the end of it.

The second time involved an engineer coming to me and saying "I just found my code in an Open Source project. It's word for word the same, someone just stripped the @author tags and copyright headers. What should I do?". Ready to guess what I told him? Again, no lawyers. He contacted the Open Source project, and informed them that he was 100% sure that was his code. The Open Source project went through their logs, found the person responsible, and booted him from the project. Then, they removed the code. Problem solved.

Now, why would we handle things this way? Well, despite what the RIAA and SCO seemt to think, noone gets rich sueing their customers, or the communities they depend upon. Also, most people want to do the right thing, and they've just made a mistake, whether that be misconfiguring some software, or trusting the wrong person.

So now, as I promised, let's look at SCO (which, btw is a renamed Caldera (remember them?), the company formerly known as SCO was just bought by my company). They don't have any of the three things holding them back that I list above: They don't care about negative press, lawsuits are their business plan, and they intend them to be very profitable. While you should certainly care about how these suits affect the community and businesses you are a part of, the odds are, they'll never be directed at you. Why? You have no money. (Remember, they need to be profitable, which means that you'd need assets measured in the millions to make it worth their while.) Will Sun ever become like SCO? I doubt it. It took SCO years to become SCO, and they started as a very small company in the first place. In order for any doomsday scenario to play out, the community surrounding Sun's intellectual property would certainly have to become worth less than the value of destroying it for the sake of some sketchy lawsuits. Which is of vanishingly small possibility, even 10 or more years down the road.

Now, with all this in mind, keep in mind that anyone can sue you for anything at all (I love that link, and just wanted to put it in there). So I'll offer you the Jim Driscoll Guarentee (tm) - I'm putting $500 of my own money up on a bet - I'll give it to the first person who's sued over any code in GlassFish, to start your legal defense fund. It's a bet I'm confident of winning.

Comments

• It's all nice and such, but you'd better check with legal before you say: "We're not going to sue you".

  Who's "we"? Sun Microsystems Inc?

  I can nearly guarantee that if I take glassfish code, put 1% more extra work, and sell it for $8 Billion to a japanese corp (yes without releasing the source, yes in violation of the license), Sun lawyers will be eating my breakfast, lunch and dinner.

  I get what you mean: small projects, errors, and misunderstandings will be handled the gentlemanly way.

  Essentially, though, one ought to be careful about using Sun code in projects that have the potential to become huge, as in billions of dollars or hundreds of millions of downloads.

  But again, that goes for all software.

  On the japanese scenario above, yes, Sun would be doing the right thing suing me, on all counts.

  To recap: You are not in a capacity to say that Sun will not sue. You could say it's very unlikely, and that would indeed be true. but you can't state it as a fact. Also, $500? That won't cover the first 3 hours into the lawsuit. Try $500,000 if you're really sure and really serious. I think as a gesture it's admirable, but face-to-face with an 90-page injunction, it's meaningless.
  

  Posted by: chris_mahan on July 20, 2005 at 09:16 AM

• *heavy sigh*

  Yes Chris, you (or anyone else) can act like a jerk and force us to have no recourse but the courts. This is, in my opinion, what Microsoft did.

  
  But that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we're not going to sue you, the reasonable person. Or are you now claiming that you are not in fact a reasonable person? That you are, in fact, ready, willing and able to do things that are patently wrong and/or illegal?

  Posted by: driscoll on July 20, 2005 at 09:58 AM

• Awww!

  When you rely on the other guy to be a gentleman, it works, if the other guy is actually a guy. When it's a corporation, it is to be assumed the corporation will maximize profit by whatever means, even if it means breaking the law knowing the penalty is less than the profit. It all comes down to profitability. This is why government vigilance is important, and this is why community vigilance is important.

  I'll not do anything illegal knowingly, and I'll not encourage anyone to. But corporations can't be trusted in that regard, so it is best to plan for that.

  My motto lately is : Expect the best, prepare for the worst.

  Posted by: chris_mahan on July 20, 2005 at 11:26 AM

• Thats funny; here I was, thinking that open sourcing software means the software will therafter be the shared ownership of all contributors. And here you are saying that if we help you you will not sue us.
  Your statemtn is irrelevant; I want to be able to sue someone else if my work is misapproriated. If Sun releases (or, worse, sells) my code as a non-opensource product, for example.
  Again; you are thinking like a corporation, and not in the spirit of open source.

  Posted by: zander on July 20, 2005 at 11:52 AM

• Chris wrote: But corporations can't be trusted in that regard, so it is best to plan for that.

  In the article above, I laid out pretty clearly why Sun could be trusted to do that, since it was not in it's business interest to do so. The same goes for all other major corporations that actually have a business plan that doesn't include litigation, which is to say, most of them.

  Posted by: driscoll on July 20, 2005 at 12:55 PM

• Zander wrote: Thats funny; here I was, thinking that open sourcing software means the software will therafter be the shared ownership of all contributors. And here you are saying that if we help you you will not sue us.

  Ah, Zander's back. Welcome back Zander. Let's see if I understand your position: Are you saying that I should instead say that I will sue you? Are you instead saying that I should remain silent on this issue, despite concerns in the community, as expressed by Chris, above? What exactly are you saying we should say? How you're putting it sounds kind of like a "when did you stop beating your wife" kind of thing, doesn't it?
  

  Posted by: driscoll on July 20, 2005 at 01:07 PM

• LOL! Open source zealots!

  In the words of Moe on the Simpsons: "ok everybody tuck your pants in to your shoes"

  I would really like to see (beyond Linux and some APIs) large open source projects that did have a lot of corporate code from corporate partners in them (JBoss, Apache, GlassFish, NetBeans, Eclipse, ect.)

  Yet the little communist (who are getting paid by a corporation) are quick to slash and burn. Go back to slashdot or emerge a program on your hacked together beige Intel PC and leave him alone.

  Posted by: bbjwerner on July 20, 2005 at 04:26 PM

• Ah, Zander's back. Welcome back Zander.
  hmm? Confusing opening statment.. Anyway; Point is that in an open source community the first thing that is important is that all contributers have equal (legal) rights. Your last couple of blogs have pointed out you have a different perspective on this. While your opinion is yours I took the effort of trying to point out your ways are not very open source like and will most likely not attract a big following.
  I'm sorry I took the effort; its obviously misplaced.

  Posted by: zander on July 21, 2005 at 06:43 AM

• Zander wrote: Point is that in an open source community the first thing that is important is that all contributers have equal (legal) rights.

  And if you'd said that, we could have had a reasonable discussion. Instead, you said: And here you are saying that if we help you you will not sue us. Which is a gross mischaracterization of what I said. Apparently, bbjwerner agreed, so it wasn't just me being sensitive, now was it?

  The point I am trying to make with this blog is that people are constantly thinking the worst of large corporations. That they are inherently selfish in action, and that this always means that we can expect the worst sort of behavior from them. While I won't argue that corporations are inherently selfish (this is not always true, but often enough that I won't belabor the point), this selfish behavior often manifests itself in actions that are far more civilized than people who don't deal with them on a regular basis would expect.

  Case in point: GlassFish. It is in Sun's best interests to build a community around the codebase that benefits the community, since doing so will benefit Sun. It's my hope and plan that we'll have a healthy, active community, filled with polite, friendly, helpful people who work together to create great software, regardless of who (if anyone) they work for. I've had the opportunity to work on, participate in, and observe quite a number of Open Source communities, and I think it's a really interesting challenge to try to get one set up. One of the biggest obstacles we have is the inherent prejudice against major corporations from folks like you and Chris. C'mon, admit it - there was nothing I was going to say that would ever have made you post any message other than the one you just posted anyway. Certainly the comments you've given in the three blogs you've commented on so far show that to be the case.

  Posted by: driscoll on July 21, 2005 at 08:38 AM

• Jim, I have no prejudice against major corporations. I work for one, and I like the environment.
  What I get flak for is that I recognize that corporations are not people, and that while people in a corporation may be nice and helpful, they still work for a corporation controlled by shareholders who traditionally only care about ROI.
  I like that Sun is opensourcing. I think it's great. Yet I do not forget that Sun is a corp, and that corps exhibit certain behaviors. That's all.

  Posted by: chris_mahan on July 21, 2005 at 12:04 PM

• No, Sun can not be trusted more than any other company

  All it takes is a couple of more bad years (financial wise), a change of ownership, a change of top management to "turn things around", and some guy similar to Darel McBride becomming the new Sun CEO.

  I have seen good companies becoming bad. Small ones and large ones. I have worked in some while they went bad during my thirty years in the industry. There is nothing which can prevent this when the time has come. No good intentions, not honest and straight employess - often at that time already, or soon-to-be, ex-employees.

  People think the worst of large corporations, because sometimes large corporations do the worst.
  There is simply no point in looking at corporate source code if there isn't an obvious need. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
  

  Posted by: ewin on July 21, 2005 at 12:33 PM

• C'mon, admit it - there was nothing I was going to say that would ever have made you post any message other than the one you just posted anyway.
  Heh; and you dare talk about inherent prejudice? It would be nice if you actually read what I said and not think I'm just here to piss you off. I'm not; and I have been posting on this site as long as it exists. Most of the time my posts are highly regarded and appreciated. Thank you.

  What you seem to miss is that the GPL is written to facilitate the corporation of all players, irrespective of size and mentality. The GPL protects all players in the open source world.
  Everything Sun does to move away from the rules of the GPL comes with an excuse that it needs to protect itself against people it at the same time says are equals. Well; that makes Sun to be more equal then others. This repeated behavior where Sun keeps saying its OK for them to take more power with excuses like this blog states is just making it worse.Do you want to do open source? Then come down from that tower and behave exactly like the rest of us. If you choose not to; don't expect people to accept, and treat you as their equals. Since you are not.
  As I said in an earlier post; saying Sun will not attack the little man is irrelevant. Just play by the same rules as all the others will actually make it irrelevant. Saying you can be better since you are honest just doesn't fly.
  I hope this makes the point clear.

  Posted by: zander on July 21, 2005 at 01:01 PM

• Sometimes I wish java.net had JavaRanch's "Be Nice" policy.

  Posted by: grlea on July 21, 2005 at 06:11 PM

• I appreciate the sentiment of your post, but wanted to bring up the other side of the coin. Not about the lawsuits, but about the cease and desist orders, no matter how informal.

  I was so excited when I heard that an enterprise-class appserver was being OpenSourced. It is right up there with OpenSolaris on my list of "wow, how much stronger the community just became" type events.

  Don't get me wrong, I like JBoss an awful lot, but it is a hard sell to "the suits" because it lacks what I call "finish": a deployment tool (I said "tool," not XDoclet, which is a programming construct), an honest-to-goodness management console where you can (gasp) change deployed resources without using ssh and vi, and so on. Sorry, I didn't mean to make that as long as it is.

  The point about Glassfish is that (as I posted in the feedback@glassfish mailing list) I don't want to have to subject my company to recalling a deployment or incurring unexpected licensing costs. It is less about being sued and more about not going through the trouble of setting up Glassfish, teaching the admins how to run it, shipping it out to a customer and then having to switch back to JBoss at the last minute because we weren't allowed to do that.

  I don't feel your point is invalid, and appreciate the effort to make it, but it's not just about the money, either.
  

  Posted by: bitmaster on July 22, 2005 at 07:16 AM

• bitmaster wrote: The point about Glassfish is that (as I posted in the feedback@glassfish mailing list) I don't want to have to subject my company to recalling a deployment or incurring unexpected licensing costs. It is less about being sued and more about not going through the trouble of setting up Glassfish, teaching the admins how to run it, shipping it out to a customer and then having to switch back to JBoss at the last minute because we weren't allowed to do that.

  Fair enough: that's why I'm so excited about being under an Open Source license. I can now say: "Sun can't do that" with absolute certainty. There is no legal way Sun could ever do that, even if we wanted to, which of course we don't.

  Posted by: driscoll on July 22, 2005 at 08:08 AM

• Chris wrote: What I get flak for is that I recognize that corporations are not people, and that while people in a corporation may be nice and helpful, they still work for a corporation controlled by shareholders who traditionally only care about ROI.

  I explain, above, why it's in the shareholders interest to not bother you, which is why I can make the statement in the title of the blog. I also point out what'll happen in the degenerative case. Chris, you're a reasonable guy - please point out the flaw in my logic, I think it'd make for an interesting discussion. So far, other than noting that corporations act differently than people (a point I readily concede), I don't think you've addressed those arguments.

  Posted by: driscoll on July 22, 2005 at 08:12 AM

• Zander wrote: It would be nice if you actually read what I said and not think I'm just here to piss you off. I'm not; and I have been posting on this site as long as it exists. Most of the time my posts are highly regarded and appreciated.

  Well, you're oh for two on my blog, which is where I got my impression. In the first place you commented, you claimed something I said wasn't true, apparently ignoring my links to the proof of my statements (you even said I was slinging FUD). In the second, you made a gross mischaracterization of what I said. So don't be shocked if I think you're not actually coming in with an open mind.

  Zander wrote: The GPL protects all players in the open source world.

  No more than any other license. The three lawsuits surrounding Open Source that I'm aware of are all related to GPL, including the one everyone (including me) keeps coming back to - the SCO lawsuit. It ain't no magic bullet, and it's disingenious to claim so.

  Zander wrote: Everything Sun does to move away from the rules of the GPL...

  GPL is not the end-all and be-all of Open Source. Or do you claim that by "moving away from the rules of the GPL", Mozilla is also somehow diverging from the One True Path?

  Zander wrote: As I said in an earlier post; saying Sun will not attack the little man is irrelevant. Just play by the same rules as all the others will actually make it irrelevant. Saying you can be better since you are honest just doesn't fly.
  I hope this makes the point clear.

  Um, no. I honestly can't parse that at all. Could you try restating it?

  Posted by: driscoll on July 22, 2005 at 08:26 AM

• grlea wrote: Sometimes I wish java.net had JavaRanch's "Be Nice" policy.

  Well, they're still nicer than Usenet :-) And I'd rather have people saying it out loud here than whispering it where I can't respond. I appreciate the effort that Chris (and yes, even Zander) are making in coming back again and again to discuss things. And so far, noone's called me a corporate tool, which is nice, though the day is young :-)

  Posted by: driscoll on July 22, 2005 at 08:29 AM

• ewin wrote: There is simply no point in looking at corporate source code if there isn't an obvious need. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

  Then you'd better steer clear of all those corporate donated patches to your favorite sourcebases. Like Tomcat. And the Apache webserver. And Geronimo. And JBoss. And Jonas. And Eclipse. And the Linux kernal. Heck, finding a sourcebase that doesn't have corporate donated code is getting harder and harder - I guess you'll have to write all your own stuff.

  So why is GlassFish especially scary? I'm curious... Given what I said above, why? As near as I can tell, the answer is "Because a corporation is sponsoring the community". That has no impact from the legal risk sense at all, you all know that, right?

  Posted by: driscoll on July 22, 2005 at 08:36 AM

• To BitMaster and driscoll:
  Scenario: GlassFish 3.0 is out, under the CDDL, and Corp X deploys it internally instead of JBoss. Fine, they can do that. No problems.
  A year later, Glassfish 4.1 comes out, also under the CDDL, and corp X rolls it out. Again, no problem, and it's a nice product, very stable, implements all the JEE stack flawlessly and has a bunch of very nice features like spring, hibernate, tapestry and jini connectors that are easy and in widespread use.
  Another year goes by, and many contributions by thousands of developers later, GlassFish 5.0 is out, with Ruby, Python, and SmallTalk scripting language capabilities, as well as php-like image manipulation tools, and now it's really cooking, and thousands of companies all oveer the world are using it, deploying it everywhere like good OpenSource products such as linux, apache, and mysql have been in the past.
  Finally, Sun goes on its own and dumps $50M in developing "enterprise" functionality and releases GFEE 9 as proprietary software for $8,000 per cpu cure, complete with support contracts from Sun and goes on a marketing campaign with all current glassfish users and says: "If you really want to be best of breed, you gotta have GFEE9!" and PHBs buy it, and now, now, the code the community contributed is in this nice, slick, and very powerful JEE engine with all the bells and whisles mentioned above, except the community can't touch it because it's binary only, and, well, it's 8 grand.
  Now, in defense of Sun, GlassFish 5.0 is still out there under the CDDL. But now management at large corps see it, again, as a hobbyist toy, since they are an, ahem, Enterprise, and only the Enterprise Edition will do for them.
  So some hackers go and fork Glassfish 5.0 and rename it to FreePescado 0.8, and they hook up bugzilla and subversion and bang it on sourceforge, toiling away as a team of ten to try to expand the code.

  In the meantime Sun is racking up $4.1 billion in sales of the GFEE 9. So yes, you bet it's in the interest of Sun shareholders not to sue the community.

  Now imagine Sun take out a patent on the "Enterprise" bit of code, and now the hackers of FreePescado can't even hope to catch up, so they eventually abandon the project...

  And much bitterness and gashing of teeth ensues.

  Posted by: chris_mahan on July 22, 2005 at 09:32 AM

• gashing should be gnashing... Although gashing of teeth does crete painful visions as well.

  Posted by: chris_mahan on July 22, 2005 at 09:39 AM

• Chris wrote: Now, in defense of Sun, GlassFish 5.0 is still out there under the CDDL. But now management at large corps see it, again, as a hobbyist toy, since they are an, ahem, Enterprise, and only the Enterprise Edition will do for them.

  Frankly, I think you're reaching... First, the scenario is absurd. But leaving that aside, how is this rather unlikely scenario different from IBM doing the same thing with the Geronimo codebase? Or Bull doing it with Jonas? I'm perplexed why this is more likely for Sun to do it, as well as being perplexed by what Sun would get out of abandoning the community. I'm also perplexed (lot perplexion going on) about why businesses would feel the need to switch, since undoubtably, some other major corp would step in with an offer of support contracts.

  I'm also rather confused by this statement: Now imagine Sun take out a patent on the "Enterprise" bit of code, and now the hackers of FreePescado can't even hope to catch up, so they eventually abandon the project...

  Now replace "Sun" with, say "Trifork", or (more likely) "IBM". How is this different? In what way is this related to the topic at hand? Patents can be taken out by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Even you.

  I'm frankly stumped by what you feel the business model would be for bringing the open source project closed. Do you really think that would ever be profitable? Do you have an example of a profitable move like that in an Open Market? Ever, in any market, even outside software? Goodness knows I can't think of one...

  But the real thing that bitmaster is worried about, and that you allude to, is abandonment of the codebase by Sun. Sun abandons projects with great reluctance, and very rarely, and only after years of notice - because it's a major corporation, and it's not in it's interests to ever leave customers in the lurch (they are very slow to forget things like that). Again, we come back to the notion that corporations act in their best interests, and it would never be in Sun's best interests to screw over folks like that - the world's just not set up that way. It's far more likely that a startup on it's first round of funding would go out of business than it is that Sun would abandon it's product. And I don't consider either notion terribly likely in the medium term. I'm mystified why you would.

  Posted by: driscoll on July 22, 2005 at 09:53 AM

• driscoll writes: I'm mystified why you would

  I don't put it past any corp to do what I described in my scenario. Google, Amazon, Ebay. IBM, Apple, etc, all have the capacity to do it, so it's not just Sun I'm harping on.

  I look at things in a very long term; 20-25 years or so for myself, but more than that because my 5 week old son might want to be a hacker/programmer and he might want to work on the code I worked on. I am personally interested in code that never ends up locked into a proprietary product.

  I have major misgivings at to whether Sun Microsystems will be around in 25 years. I think IBM will be. I'm on the fence about MSFT.

  Jim, I know what it feels like to be writing "from the inside" of a company. One has to remember that FOSS ultimately transcends corporate, national, cultural and linguistics boundaries. One also hopes it transcends periods in the modern era, to live on of itself like the great works of literature and art from ages past. My hope is that great software becomes part of worldwide culture like Greek and Roman architecture, law, and thinking, Michelangelo's art, and Beethoven's symphonies.

  In view of that, ROI is completely meaningless to me.

  Now I hope that you begin to undertand where I am coming from.

  Posted by: chris_mahan on July 22, 2005 at 10:41 AM

• Chris wrote: I don't put it past any corp to do what I described in my scenario.

  There's a fundamental difference between can and would. While, as you say, corporations can do bad things, in order for your scenario to be credible, you have to explain why they would. While corporations do bad things, they don't go shooting up a shopping mall - their bad things are always based on self interest - they avoid the bad things that are obviously not in the their best interest. It's my claim that our self interest, in combination with the existing contracts and the law, essentially stops us from messing things up in any reasonable time period (do you really think we'll be on the same software in 25 years? Do you remember the software we were using 25 years ago? ) So, while you don't care about ROI, you really should.

  Additionally, as I've said before, all the major software projects I can think of have corporate code in them. You need to start thinking about this for everything you do. Linux Kernel. Apache Webserver. Big, important things.

  But we're not going to sue you. I think the statement still holds water.

  Posted by: driscoll on July 22, 2005 at 11:00 AM

• P.S. I'm on a plane to Europe, so I'll be late responding to my blog for a while. I'm not ignoring you.

  Posted by: driscoll on July 22, 2005 at 11:03 AM

• Corporate code under the GPL does not bother me. Because, well, they can't proprietarize the codebase, since they don't have the copyright to the codebase. Also, they allow me to use and modify the code for free as in beer and free as in freedom for my own stuff (with no restriction at all; think about that) and for stuff I contribute to society as long as I abide by the GPL.

  The incentive for corporations to take a fork private? As in the story above, billions of dollars in sales.

  Have a safe trip.

  Posted by: chris_mahan on July 22, 2005 at 11:30 AM

• Chris wrote: Corporate code under the GPL does not bother me. Because, well, they can't proprietarize the codebase, since they don't have the copyright to the codebase. Also, they allow me to use and modify the code for free as in beer and free as in freedom for my own stuff (with no restriction at all; think about that) and for stuff I contribute to society as long as I abide by the GPL.

  You're again arguing Apples and Oranges, and I think we need to make that clear.

  First, corporations own the copyright to the code that they contribute under the GPL. If you do anything where it's put under a non-GPL license, they have recourse. As you say, if you keep it under the GPL, it's not.

  Similarly, if the code is under CDDL, and it's kept under CDDL, there's never a problem.
  One crucial difference, of course, is that under CDDL, you can integrate the CDDL'd code in with other code that's under different licenses, like the Mozzilla or the ASL - the major exception is the GPL. If your code is under the GPL, you can only integrate it with other GPL'd code. While the GPL is the most popular license, it's hardly the only one, so this is a major limitation to most people, though of course not to you, since you've already said you only like the GPL - but most people are not like you.
  Lastly, your statement that there's no restrictions at all are wrong, of course - there's the restriction of making your modified code public, which is the same restriction of CDDL, as well as the additional restriction that all code that you bundle be public as well. While you don't mind this restriction (and even like it), many folks do. I'm not one of them, when I do work on my own, but hey, everyone's got an opinion on this stuff, and no two match.

  Posted by: driscoll on July 24, 2005 at 07:36 AM

• Have a safe trip.
  Prague is beautiful :-)

  Posted by: driscoll on July 24, 2005 at 07:37 AM

• your statement that there's no restrictions at all are wrong,
  Jim, you are replying to fast; his statement was 100% correct. I think you misread it and on top of that missed the context of glassfish not being guided by the copyright-license alone; but by other contracts as well.

  Cheers.

  Posted by: zander on July 25, 2005 at 06:51 AM

• Corporate code under the GPL does not bother me. Because, well, they can't proprietarize the codebase, since they don't have the copyright to the codebase.

  This case, as I hope has been made clear, has notthing to do with the GPL, but the copyright. They are not one in the same. He who holds copyright can do whatever they want. MySQL can take their codebase and proprietize exactly the same way that Sun can. The GPLd version will remain GPLd, but MySQL can take their fork and run any time they want. In fact, they do this routinely (Community Edition vs their Commercial versions). It's their entire business model.

  Also, they allow me to use and modify the code for free as in beer and free as in freedom for my own stuff (with no restriction at all; think about that) and for stuff I contribute to society as long as I abide by the GPL.

  Save for the restriction that any code combined with GPL'd code (as defined by the GPL, but it's fairly sweeping in reality), not just changes to GPL code itself, must also be not only released, but released licensed under the GPL. While some consider this free and open, others consider this a limitation and restriction of the GPL, as it limits and restricts what an author can do with his own code, including the freedom to not release it at all. The LGPL was made to made to help remedy this, but that doesn't change GPL code.

  All of the hesitation you may have with working on a project like GlassFish centers solely on the Copyright issue, and has nothing to do with the CDDL, which keeps free code free, keeps changes to free code free, but allows others to mix and match with other code, thus making the free code even more usable.
  You are free to fork the GlassFish sourcebase, and release your own changes without granting Sun copyright. You can do this any time you want, and they can not stop you.

  Posted by: whartung on July 25, 2005 at 03:35 PM

• whartung,

  You wrote:

  "You are free to fork the GlassFish sourcebase, and release your own changes without granting Sun copyright. You can do this any time you want, and they can not stop you."

  True. but I can never get my fork away from the CDDL.
  Sun can take all of glassfish with all community contributions and fork a proprietary product out of it, since they have free and unrestricted use of the copyright. I don't have that luxury, and thus we are not on equal footing.

  So it's not really the CDDL I have an issue with, it's the Sun Contributor Agreement I have a beef with.
  

  Posted by: chris_mahan on October 21, 2005 at 09:49 AM

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