On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 4:44 PM, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com> wrote: > >> Free as in what the FSF names code encumbered with restrictions that >> prevent combining it with any other components. > > specifically, the Sun Java license restricted redistribution of the > runtime, and it wasn't opensource at all. I meant that the GPL imposes restrictions. It would have been possible to make it trivial to install directly if not to completely automate it. And others started redistributing long before RH included it in their paid support channel. In any case, shipping something that pretended to be java but wasn't had to be the worst possible thing that could happen to a language. > further, it had type-of-use > restrictions, you had to agree not to run 'standard edition' (free) on > mobile phones, the licensing required a specific J2ME edition for phone > use which was NOT free. Yet oddly, long ago RH shipped Netscape binaries... -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.coim