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Authored by: PolR on Monday, April 23 2012 @ 05:24 AM EDT |
This is a release of Java *implementations* under the GPL. Programmers
distinguish between the language and its implementations. They think
implementations may be copyrighted and licensed but not the language itself.
This means you should be able to make and distribute an independent
implementation of a language without infringing on a copyright on another
implementation.
This situation raises a question on Mark's "work as a whole" argument.
It is based on a GPL release of Java implementations. Why would anyone be able
to invoke the GPL and hold Sun/Oracle to it when the contested code is not
derived from any GPLed implementation? There is a missing link why I don't
see.
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Authored by: s65_sean on Monday, April 23 2012 @ 07:18 AM EDT |
that article says:
Sun is opening the door to greater innovation by
open sourcing key Java implementations—Java Platform Standard Edition
(Java SE), Java Platform Micro Edition (Java ME), and Java Platform Enterprise
Edition (Java EE)—under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), the
same license as GNU/Linux.
It does not say anything about open
sourcing the java language. The things mentioned in that article are java
implementations, not the java language.
Mark's statement, which
you repeated, says that Oracle released the java programming language
under GPLv2.
This is confusing to me, and possibly many other readers,
in the same way that Oracle's song and dance in this trial has been confusing to
the judge and jury. You are making statements about the implementations and
claiming that they apply to the language, just as Oracle has tried to confuse
the court about the differences between the language, the APIs, the
implementations, the JDK and the TCK. According to Oracle, they are all "java"
and so refer to things about each of them as if they are all the same thing.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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