O'Reilly OnJava: Will You See Open Source J2EE Implementations?

Oct 11, 2001, 14:59 (41 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Mike Loukides)

"Another problem -- and this leads us to the Lutris case -- is that Sun has taken the position that any licensee of the J2EE specification is privy to Sun's intellectual property, and can't legally release an open source implementation. (In particular, they have told Lutris that they may not apply an open source license to their Enhydra J2EE platform.)

I'm at a loss for what to say here. Sun certainly has the right to interpret their licenses any way they want or to make up any licenses they want. This move, however, strikes me as extraordinary bad faith -- and just plain stupid. Sun desperately needs the cooperation of the open source community. Telling developers that they cannot release open source implementations if they have seen the J2EE spec is certainly not going to earn Sun any friends. I can't think of any better way for Sun to destroy what it has accomplished with Java over the past few years.

When Sun first announced its Community Source License (SCSL), I thought it was an interesting approach to bridging the gap between open source and commercial software developers. It appears, however, that Sun wants the appearance of openness without the substance. They have the right to take that posture, but it's ultimately destructive."

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