[4016] in Release_7.7_team
Putting Sun JRE package in Linux Athena release
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Tue Sep 16 18:49:45 2003
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@mit.edu
Cc: jis@mit.edu, azary@mit.edu
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <1063752583.4829.128.camel@tokata.mit.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 18:49:43 -0400
This note summarizes the issues involved with putting the Sun JRE into
the Athena Linux release. It is primarily to make Mozilla work, but the
bits are so-structured that other use is possible. So I want to:
document what we're doing and why.
raise with the Release Team the issue of how to do it.
--- Background ----
On Solaris, the Jave Run-Time environment is part of Solaris, so there's
no problem with using our traditional "unpack it all and install it all"
model to put JRE into the Athena release, and letting it get copied onto
local disk.
With Linux, the JRE comes with an rpm extractor wrapper that assumes one
is either an individual or a software development OEM. You accept a
license that says things like "You can use it internally to your
enterprise.", "You can write a big software subsystem that requires the
JRE, and redistribute the JRE to make that software run."
Last year we ripped out and replaced every last bit of restricted
software on the Athena Linux system so that members of the MIT community
anywhere in the world could just run the Athena installer and have it
work. In fact, anyone anywhere regardless of MIT affiliation could run
MIT Athena Linux.
With Sun our deployment makes it more difficult (but admittedly not
impossible) for outsiders to run the MIT-licensed Sun software.
The intent of the Athena distribution is to provide the MIT community
with a working combination of OS, services, and applications.
The intent of the Sun JRE license is to prevent the bad guys from doing
bad things with the JRE.
---- How to do it ----
Although it was nice that the Athena Linux release was completely
unrestricted, it looks like it needs to be somewhat restrictive now, at
least in principle.
I want us to, as much as possible, keep the ability of Athena to be
installed in remote locations without a lot of pain.
The advice I have right now is to put the JRE in the release
unrestricted, and leave for later the ability to add restrictions.
---- Proposal ----
Just unpack the RPM into the Athena release, and add some boilerplate
caveat in the Athena installer saying that the release is intended for
use by members of the MIT educational community, and that other use is
forbidden or some such.
Team? What do y'all think?
-wdc
