What are tainted developers allowed to work on?

[Robert Schuster]

Hi.

James Damour telled us some months ago that he had studied certain sources
of the Sun JDK and is therefore considered a tainted developer which
cannot contribute code to GNU Classpath.

Nevertheless he is eager to help making Free Java a reality.

The problem is that we do not have a definite answer on what people like James
may contribute (or at least this answer is not written down). The GNU Classpath 
FAQ says:

3.2 Can I look as Sun's sources to get inspiration?
No. In fact, if you read Sun's sources we can't accept any code from you. 

It was said however that there are other parts on which tainted developers may 
work:
- Mauve test cases
- Example programs for Classpath
- Documentation fixes (on java[x]. or gnu. classes?)
- Helper programs (e.g. japitools) and scripts

Other things where we should find a resolution are:
- May tainted developers contribute ideas on design decisions (on 
mailing-list/IRC)?
- May tainted devs fix simple bugs (e.g forgotten imports that causes classpath 
compilation to fail or misspelled method names)

If we cannot find a solution on at least one of those points because of legal 
uncertainity whom do we have to ask then (FSF legal?)
and who is doing the communication?

cu
Robert

References:

Recent post by James Damour:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/classpath/2005-01/msg00005.html

James asking to clarify situation on Javadoc commits in June 2004:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/classpath/2004-06/msg00134.html

Mark's reply to James where he presents possible activities in the last 
paragraph:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/classpath/2004-06/msg00135.html