Date:        Tue, 24 Sep 2002 14:24:17 +0300
    From:        Mihai Chelaru <kefren@netbastards.org>
    Message-ID:  <200209241424.17415.kefren@netbastards.org>

  | Basically this means that the SUN code cannot be modified

No it doesn't.  The clause about modifications relates to patent
infringements only.   That is, if by modifying the code you
infringe upon some patent they own, they don't covenant not to
sue you.   In other words, this covenant isn't a get out of jail
free card that anyone can use to infringe upon any sun patent
(just by "modifying" this code forever until it eventually does
some other task, and then claiming that sun covenanted not to sue).

Its the same about separating the code - that is, you don't get to
extract the bit of the code that implements the patented algorithm,
and use it elsewhere (and claim that sun have agreed not to sue).
Etc.

  | and that any user of this code cannot sue SUN,

Only wrt patents - if a sun delivery truck runs over your dog, you will
still be able to sue (assuming you could have if you weren't using this
code).

Patent swapping has become SOP for a lot of organisations these days,
many patents never expect to recover licence fees, only to get access
to someone else's technology by swapping the rights.

It would still be (assuming this code is included) a good idea to make
it easy to omit this code, in case some vendor who does own patents that
they don't desire to allow sun the use of, can separate out this
algorithm easily.

Note, this isn't a copyright issue, Sun aren't basing the copyright
licence upon any patent covenant.   That is, there's no problem copying
this code to anywhere.   The patent will only cover actually using the
algorithm patented (by any code of course, so writing our own code to
handle it would be exactly the wrong thing to do, at least in any
jurisdiction covered by the patent), so just making it conditionally
compilable would work just fine to allow people to exclude it.

kre