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Authored by: bugstomper on Monday, April 23 2012 @ 10:30 AM EDT |
Without getting a license to the TCK, there is a GPL+CPE license for you to do
anything that GPL+CPE lets you do with OpenJDK. That has to include making a
derivative of OpenJDK. According to Oracle's theory of copyright law writing a
compatible class library implementation based on the OpenJDK specification
produces a derivative work. That derivative work would have to be allowed under
GPL+CPE.
What does that mean if the part that is under GPL is not source code, but is the
SSO of GPLd software (under Oracle's theory that SSO is protected by copyright)?
GPL requires you to provide the source code of any derivative work and make it
possible for someone to modify and compile it. That's covered by releasing the
37 packages under the Apache License. You would not be able to remove the
copyleft of the SSO, but what does that restrict?
What if all that the GPL copyleft of the SSO means is that if someone makes a
derivative SSO by adding incompatible elements to the java.* packages then they
would have to release the new incompatible API's SSO under GPL?
Google would be allowed to distribute Android with all of their code under the
Apache License, which is a compatible license with GPL. If there are elements of
Android which are covered by copyright protection and available under GPL+CPE
from Oracle, then they cannot remove GPL+CPE from those elements. But CPE says
that other packages can be combined freely with the GPL+CPE part. So we are only
talking about the 37 packages. As long as Google's customers do not customize by
making incompatible API changes in the java.* namespace that should not present
a problem for Google. If they did, by Oracle's theory, the modifications in
those 37 packages would have to be open sourced, and the modified SSO GPLd. That
would be no big deal.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 23 2012 @ 11:49 AM EDT |
Passing the TCK does not grant a lisence to the API spec, it grants a lisence to
use the Java *Trademarks* with regard to your *implementation* of the java api
spec.
The implementation is not the language.
The implementation is not the api.
And neither are the trademarks.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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