Re: GNU Classpath

[John Hasler]

jphamlore writes:
> The GNU Classpath website
> http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/faq/faq.html is full of violations
> of the published guidelines for use of Sun trademarks: ...

I see nothing on that site violates trademark law.

> The trademarks should never be used as nouns or in possessives, but GNU
> Classpath's web site does that all over the place.

Sun's suggestions are not law and a trademark is not a copyright.  Sun does
not own the word Java (or the word Sun, for that matter).

> The GNU Classpath project takes great care in establishing that
> developers are clean with respect to not having read the implementation's
> source code--but should developers also be clean from having read the API
> specification?

They don't need to be.  Copyright does not protect the API: only Sun's
specific expression of it.

> The API's license file specifically says that nothing other than internal
> usage of the specification is allowed except for complete implementations
> that pass the required conformance tests.

So?  They are using it internally to develop their implementation.  They
are not distributing the document or any derivative of it.
-- 
John Hasler 
john@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA