Can we redistribute Oracle tools.jar? [closed]

Question

Can the tools.jar which comes with the Oracle JDK be distributed along with a commercial product which depends on it (that is, legally, according to the terms of Oracle's license)? Whether yes or no, please provide a reference to substantiate your answer.

Twentyone

Are you trying to dodge the JDK installation requirement? I don't actually think (technically, if not legally, speaking) it's very proper to deliver tools.jar standalone. You should aim for a better solution, up to and including just requiring the JDK to be installed. Or, you could do it the Eclipse way: Eclipse comes with its own Java compiler (called ecj), and so it can be used with just the JRE. – Huey

Absolutely not trying to dodge anything. I just want to use a utility in that jar (the "attach api"). – Twentyone

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about licensing or legal issues, not programming or software development. See here and here for details, and the help center for more. – Jojo

According to the link you posted, it's on-topic for Programming. So how about migrating it there. – Twentyone

@Twentyone Questions older than 60 days cannot be migrated. – Adai

Answer 1

According to my reading, yes, but with some caveats:

• You must redistribute the entire Oracle JDK, OR the entire JRE with just "The javac bytecode compiler" which includes tools.jar; that redistribution is allowed to be "bundled" with your app.
• Redistributed JDK or JRE must be "complete and unmodified" (minus a couple sections about things you can add and/or subtract).
• Can never redistribute beta versions.
• You comply with the other general terms covered in the redistribution section of the license (my source for this entire answer).

Crawl

Ah yes, that looks like what I want. :) "The limited set of files and directories from the JDK listed below may be included in vendor redistributions of the Java TM Runtime Environment (JRE TM ). They cannot be redistributed separately, and must accompany an identically versioned JRE distribution." There is a set of files specifically for the "dynamic attach mechanism". Thanks! – Twentyone

See this answer on opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4569/… – Bustee