On Fri, 20 Jul 2001, Jonathan Belson wrote:
> > > is this a "political" issue or is there just no maintainer for JAVA
> > > packages?
> >
> > Sun's Java implementation is proprietary software. You can't even
> > redistribute it, much less improve it and share it with your friends,
> > like you can the rest of Debian.
>
> You can't redistribute it in binary form unless it's been approved
> by Sun, since they want to ensure that distributed versions are
> standards-compliant (and make money in the process - no suprises there).
>
> >From an objective point of view, how could Sun have stopped Microsoft
> from distributing their non-standard JDK (ie. produces non-portable
> code by default) if they hadn't kept ownership of Java?
Can you redistribute it in source form? If yes, providing a source package can
be convenient...
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
