The appendix to the Java Virtual Machine specification states:
License for Evaluation Purposes. Specification Lead hereby grants you a fully-paid, non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide, limited license (without the right to sublicense), under Specification Lead's applicable intellectual property rights to view, download, use and reproduce the Specification only for the purpose of internal evaluation. This includes (i) developing applications intended to run on an implementation of the Specification, provided that such applications do not themselves implement any portion(s) of the Specification, and (ii) discussing the Specification with any third party; and (iii) excerpting brief portions of the Specification in oral or written communications which discuss the Specification provided that such excerpts do not in the aggregate constitute a significant portion of the Specification.
License for the Distribution of Compliant Implementations. Specification Lead also grants you a perpetual, non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free, limited license (without the right to sublicense) under any applicable copyrights or, subject to the provisions of subsection 4 below, patent rights it may have covering the Specification to create and/or distribute an Independent Implementation of the Specification that: (a) fully implements the Specification including all its required interfaces and functionality; (b) does not modify, subset, superset or otherwise extend the Licensor Name Space, or include any public or protected packages, classes, Java interfaces, fields or methods within the Licensor Name Space other than those required/authorized by the Specification or Specifications being implemented; and (c) passes the Technology Compatibility Kit (including satisfying the requirements of the applicable TCK Users Guide) for such Specification ("Compliant Implementation"). In addition, the foregoing license is expressly conditioned on your not acting outside its scope. No license is granted hereunder for any other purpose (including, for example, modifying the Specification, other than to the extent of your fair use rights, or distributing the Specification to third parties). Also, no right, title, or interest in or to any trademarks, service marks, or trade names of Specification Lead or Specification Lead's licensors is granted hereunder. Java, and Java-related logos, marks and names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle America, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries.
Remainder of appendix omitted for brevity(see link for rest),
Does this mean that it is illegal to create a implementation of a Java Virtual machine without having access to a TCK for that implementation? What counts as an implementation?
