By Rachel Chalmers
Sun Microsystems Inc and Inprise Corp offended members of a developers group when they omitted any reference to that group in a press release announcing a port of Java 2 to the Linux platform – proof if proof were needed that there’s no such thing as a free port. The first release of the Linux port of the Java 2 platform developed by Sun and Inprise is available immediately, the companies said. But anyone who cared to look into the source code would find large swathes of it unchanged from work done by the Blackdown Project. As far as I know, Sun has all the right to use our code, admitted Blackdown’s Juergen Kreileder in an impassioned mail to the Java-Linux list. But today’s press release is a slap in the face for us! This press release makes it look like it was all Sun/Inprise’s work.
It is a huge miscommunication, an apologetic Sun spokesperson Susan Struble told ComputerWire. We have worked with Blackdown and we hope to work with Blackdown in the future. Apparently, Sun’s lead contact at Blackdown ended his association with the group, leaving Sun with only an email address with which to contact Kreileder. Kreileder did not respond to Sun’s email messages, and so the unfortunate press release went out without giving Blackdown any credit. Sun is anxious to repair its relationship with the group, and Struble says: We’ve actually had in the works a series of stories about the history of porting the Java platform to Linux. It was basically all about the Blackdown developers! If there’s one thing to be learned from all this, it’s that even though Sun retains the rights to its code under its Community Source License, maintaining diplomatic relations with its developer community remains a far from straightforward task.
