Java.net Terms of Use

Sometimes we make progress. Way last year, I got email from Norbert Lindenberg, grousing about the Terms of Use on Java.net; they were full of scary language about how you and your employer had to indemnify Sun and “its business partners” against anything bad that might happen with any connection to anything you did, and about how you were signing up for the similarly-scary sun.com terms of use. So I went poking around and asked the Java.net people why they sounded unfriendly, and they said, “Hmm, let’s talk to the lawyers”, who said, more or less, “If there are good business reasons to relax this a little, well OK then.” It turns out we’re partnering on this stuff with O’Reilly and CollabNet, so there were a lot of moving parts involved; a whole bunch of people had to pitch in. I didn’t do much of the work, so I may have this wrong, but from where I sit it looks like Marla Parker and and Cliff Allen deserve special credit. Anyhow, as of yesterday, things are better. Check it out: the new Java.net Website Terms of Use. Still not light reading, of course, but not likely to cause potential contributors any heartburn.