Re: [Savannah-hackers] submission of japitools - savannah.nongnu.org

[Stuart Ballard]

Alaska Subedi wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm evaluating the project you submitted for approval in Savannah.

Thank you very much for your time :)

> I don't think we can publish the .japi files generated from Sun's JDK
> API. If you think it is leagal to publish, please tell us the reason
> and you may put it.

I'm not a lawyer so my reasoning is more based on common sense than the 
law. I'm fully aware that the law may not follow common sense, so I 
defer to your judgement as to whether my argument would hold legal water.

Basically, my reasoning is that the japi file contains no information 
that isn't in the public domain. The format is specifically designed to 
cover only information necessary for compatibly implementing an API. My 
understanding is that public interfaces and APIs are not copyrightable, 
so the information in the japi file must logically be in the public 
domain also.

Originally, Japize was written using reflection, which would have led to 
an even stronger argument - "it's just printing the results of calling 
public APIs". That doesn't apply any longer - it actually does examine 
the binaries - so it comes down to whether the information that's 
actually extracted is copyrightable, and I believe it isn't.

> Also, you cannot use 2000-2002 in copyright notice. Please check
> http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html for
> more information on this.

I'll read that URL and fix it.

> Please address this issue and I will approve your project for
> inclusion in Savannah.

Thanks!

Stuart.

--
Stuart Ballard, Senior Web Developer
NetReach, Inc.
(215) 283-2300, ext. 126
http://www.netreach.com/