Sun Microsystems said yesterday it is licensing the next Java 2 Standard Edition (J2EE) under three licenses it promised would eliminate confusing legal documentation and slowly open the platform to broader community input.
The company is also trusting developers using its licenses to maintain interoperability rather than fork the platform, and will educate and assist those companies who introduce changes that take them too far away from the official J2SE specification.
Java father James Gosling said Sun is treading a thin line to balance the interests of open source, pushing to release Java, and enterprise customers using Java who are more interested in stability and standards.
We have been doing this delicate balancing act to respect the needs of both sides. Trying to create this licensing and collaborative atmosphere that’s as close to open source we can get without losing interoperability and compatibility. It’s a very difficult thing for us to balance. As time passes the balance will change, Gosling said.
Sun’s hopes to adopt a system similar to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). People will donate J2SE fixes and improvements to the community on regular basis, with certain individuals taking on greater significance as their levels of contribution are recognized for their quality and importance.
Don’t expect complete strangers to walk up with 10,000 lines of code and for us to drop it in, Sun vice president and fellow Graham Hamilton said.
Sun’s three new licenses replace Sun Community Sourced License, SCSL launched in 2003 and believed cumbersome and too detailed for most. The three licenses are: the Java Internal User License (JIUL) for enterprise-based developers, Java Distribution License (JDL) for commercial licensees, and the Java Research License (JRL) for academic institutions.
The licenses are still in draft, expected for completing during the next few months, with Sun promising JRL, for example, would run to just two pages in length. Sun said it may launch a fourth license, but is trying to avoid license fragmentation.
J2SE is acting as a testing ground for server-side Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). J2SE is the basis for J2EE, but Sun said it is waiting to see how the changes work for J2SE before extending the licenses to J2EE. This is an experiment for us… if it works well, we might look at applying it elsewhere, Hamilton said.
