Dual Licensing

[Brian Behlendorf]

On Sun, 28 Nov 1999, Bruce Perens wrote:
> From: David Johnson <arandir at meer.net>
> > According to the Bill Joy interview in Linux magazine, there has been a very
> > good response to Sun's licensing.
> 
> What would you expect Bill Joy to say?
> 
> What I am told by every Sun staffer I run into is that this is a point of
> great contention _within_Sun_, with much of engineering on the "go to real
> Open Source" side, and management on the "SCSL is best" side. Bill Joy is
> very definitely management.

I attended the Jini Community Summit in Maryland about a month and a half
ago.  I really am not in any position to speak for the Jini community - I
was there, along with Mitchell Baker, speaking about what "Open Source"
really means, so take all this as the viewpoint of an outsider.

There were about 200 attendees there, spread across roughly 50-60
different companies.  Hardware vendors, software companies
(operating systems and application), ecommerce tool companies, merchants,
and government/public institutions.  

I have to say I was very positively impressed by the degree to which this
group of people (most of whom had met at a previous community summit a few
months before) were acting like a community, as much or more than I've
seen Open Source projects act like one.  There were many discussions on
how to share decision-making authority within the community, with Sun as a
peer in that community rather than as a host.  There was discussion about
a separate SCSL for Jini that would be more liberal; and even a discussion
about alternate places to send SCSL-mandated licensing fees.  And even a
discussion about the right to fork.

I hate to be so vague, I'm just not in a position to speak authoritatively
on any of these issues.  There is at least one Sun employee who follows
this list who is.  I could probably ask some of the Jini community leaders
if they've got anything they'd like to make this list/community aware of;
I think they're still digesting the results of the summit.  

	Brian