[lsb-discuss] LSB conf call notes for 2008-07-30

[Jeff Licquia]

Theodore Tso wrote:
> I could be wrong, but from a legal point of view, I thought the
> trademark agreements were that people aren't allocated to call their
> bag of bits "Java" until they pass the JCK.  Hence, until they certify
> that bag of bits, they could distribute it as "Icedtea", but they
> wouldn't be able to distribute packages that install in /usr/bin/java
> (and which incorporates the name "java" in the package name) until
> they pass the JCK.  Is that correct?

There could be a chicken-and-egg issue there; if you're required to call 
the JVM "java" by the TCK, then you won't pass the TCK until you do.

Also, I believe there are "Javas" that haven't passed the JCK but 
install into /usr/bin/java; gcj and kaffe come to mind.  I don't know 
that Sun pursues its trademark into the functional arena.  But perhaps 
Dalibor knows better.

> Secondly, while I've never run the JCK myself, I seem to recall from
> colleagues of mine that running the JCK can take a full five days to
> complete.  If that is true, I'm not so sure that integrating it into
> the LSB distribution test kit makes a lot of sense....

We used to recommend that people plan for test runs to take a whole day. 
  I think we've gotten rid of some of the holdups, but we've also added 
tests.  I think we're at about 6-8 hours now.

Of course, adding five days is a number of orders of magnitude 
different. :-)

My concern is that, if the JCK is too hard to run, not distributed with 
the rest of the test suite, and not integrated into DTK Manager, then it 
will simply not be run.  I don't think it's in our best interest to 
create a "de facto profile" where people claim to be LSB compliant 
"except for Java" and skip certification.

I don't know if that's a realistic worry.  But if it isn't, maybe it's 
also not a realistic worry that people will be put off by the five-day 
run time.