Danese Cooper, manager of the Sun Open Source Programs Office, shared her thoughts on developments in the open source community with Janice J. Heiss in a recent interview that sheds considerable light on the agreement Sun reached with the Apache Software Foundation and members of the Java Community ProcessSM (JCPSM) program on the use of JavaTM technology specifications.

The agreement is important, Cooper said, "...because it allows the open source world new access to the Java programming language," permitting Java Specification Requests (JSRs) at the discrection of the Spec Lead. Another change had to do with the new requirement for an expert group to disclose its licensing terms before a specification is final. Now, Cooper pointed out, "open source JSRs allow every accepted contribution to be useful to the contributor and will make it possible for projects like Apache to run Tomcat like all their other open source projects."

The greatest potential impact of the agreement, Cooper continued, will stem from Sun's commitment "...to allow all Sun-led specifications to have compatible implementations alternately under any license. So, if you implement to the specification (without ever looking at our reference implementation) and you pass the technical compatibility kit (TCK), then you'll be 'compatible' (which means perfectly interoperable) with our reference implementation."

Cooper said it had been a problem to develop tests for such things as a variety of GUIs or for headless servers that cannot be required to contain SWING or AWT. The problem was addressed by mandating the inclusion of Sun reference implementation code for pieces without TCK coverage.

If Sun should ever release Java reference implementations under an open source license, Cooper said she would expect to see the community create links between the Java programming language and Perl and Python, which are common entry points for new programmers. This would make Java technology even more popular than it is currently, she observed.

Finally, on the differences between General Public License (GPL) and BSD, Cooper explained that GPL required any code that a developer adds, modifies or combines be made publicly available; BSD does not. BSD, on the other hand, allows developers to make unconstrained changes or additions as long as the code is returned as a contribution under the rule of a cultural norm rather than a legal obligation. What is often missed in this situation, Cooper remarked, is that developers overlook the requirement that non-GPL code added to GPL code must become GPL, which frustrates contributions from commercial entities.

Sun has attempted to find a middle ground, Cooper pointed out, with its Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) to cover both free and open source situations. Requests from the community to use SISSL are uniformly approved by Sun, Cooper concluded.

For the complete interview, see:

http://java.sun.com/features/2002/09/opn_src_cooper.html [...read more...]

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