RMS, previously, on Sun freeing java

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 10:25 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> Thanks for the links.  Seemed to play out through libavcodec here, but 
> I might have built it non-free-ly.

It's often difficult to tell :/

> I'm a bit surprised that RMS speaks as if Sun have already released it 
> all under the GPL, rather than merely saying that they will release 
> most of it next year.  Why all the premature Sun-bathing?

I guess it depends on your point of view: after all, until the code is
out there with GPL headers, the act isn't complete.

I think it's useful that Sun have announced this, though - it gives the
Java projects out there a chance to plan, and to go through the code
being released piece by piece. Whether or not that incremental strategy
is the best way, I'm not sure, but since they seem to be saying that
parts cannot be made free software I guess they must still be working
through all the various third-party stuff they can't release.

In general, I think I prefer that Sun have announced this now, to fulfil
the promise later, than for them to wait until later to decide and then
"drop the G-bomb" - I think it's helpful to people like the Classpath
developers.

Cheers,

Alex.