RE: java.net, JavaOne

["Boehm, Hans" <hans dot boehm at hp dot com>]

I am certainly not a lawyer, and I have not run this past an HP
attorney.  But what bothers me about these rules is that if I chose to
participate,  I would be granting what appears to me is an extremely
broad license to anything I post to "the hosts", i.e. Sun and O'Reilly,
who do not seem to be constrained to license it to anyone else.  And my
reading of the agreement is that "the hosts" are not constrained to
reuse the material only in ways that are consistent with the original
license.

I would have no objection to agreeing to something that gives the hosts
permission to redistribute content that I post, with my license left
intact.  That's only fair.  But this can be read as doing far more than
that.  I would guess that it allows, for example, my GPL code to be
included in Sun proprietary products.  And I don't understand whether it
effectively licenses a patent that is embodied in one of those pieces of
code to be used by Sun in unrelated code.  (I personally dislike
software patents, and would be happy to get rid of them.  But until
then, we still have to play by the rules, whether we like them or not.
And this kind of stuff matters to my employer.)

It may be that the intent here was much more reasonable than that.  But
if so, I think it could, and should, have been phrased much more
clearly.

Hans

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fernando Lozano [mailto:fernando@lozano.eti.br] 
> Sent: Monday, November 07, 2005 12:44 PM
> To: Boehm, Hans
> Cc: Dalibor Topic; Chris Gray; Mark Wielaard; java@gcc.gnu.org
> Subject: Re: java.net, JavaOne
> 
> 
> Hi Hans,
> 
> >I recommend reading the java.net terms of participation
> >(http://www.java.net/terms.csp) carefully, if you are asked 
> to agree to 
> >it.  Pay particular attention to clause 12.
> >
> >This issue was raised earlier, but I still see the clause 
> there.  They 
> >may have limited the services for which you need to agree to this.
> >
> >Based on my understanding of this agreement, as an HP 
> employee, I would 
> >certainly not agree to this without consulting an attorney.
> >  
> >
> It doesn't troubles me (and lots of open source projects 
> hosted there) 
> and in fact such a provision is necessary. Suppose someone 
> contributes 
> content to a wiki, a blog or to the source code repository of any 
> project, and later sues java.net for redistributing the content.
> 
> I can't imagine how they could legally mantain the site 
> withtou a clause 
> like this (but I'd welcome any advice on how the working could be 
> better). For example, they quote parts of forms submissions, 
> blogs and 
> articles on the home-page to attract visitors, and they publish this 
> under RSS, so they need the right to "adapt". But in other 
> way I guess 
> this should be under "fair use" and would not need explicit provision 
> for in the terms of participation. Does anyone know a lawyer wo could 
> give us an opinion?
> 
> Their copyright problem is worse than for sourceforge and similars 
> because java.net is not exclusive for open source projects.
> 
> >Re: JavaOne
> >
> >I did give a JavaOne talk last year.  I agree that it's a mixture of 
> >good technical content and marketing.
> >
> >The talk acceptance process is very opaque to me.  The talk 
> slides for 
> >a technical presentation have to be cleared through a Sun 
> technical and 
> >legal review.  I actually found the former quite helpful (since it 
> >caught some bugs) and the latter very annoying (since in my case it 
> >added technical bugs way too late in the process).
> >
> >In spite of all of this, I think that open source submissions to 
> >JavaOne are probably a good thing.
> >  
> >
> Yes, the proccess is very opaque. Basically, the sponsors 
> decide anyway 
> they wish. But remember the sponsors support many free software 
> projects, so this is not necessarily a bad thing.
> 
> About the techinical and legal review, I presented a BOF and did not 
> have to pass though any of these. But I missed support when the 
> projector didn't work with my notebook. BOFs are very 
> informal and could 
> become a GCJ Summit if the audience agress to do so.
> 
> 
> []s, Fernando Lozano
>