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Authored by: Ian Al on Tuesday, June 04 2013 @ 11:41 AM EDT |
The agreement document was published by Sun to the world at the beginning of
Java. It was offered free as in beer and libre and open as in published on the
web together with the JVM.
Sun reneged on that agreement by hedging it around with all sorts of usage
limitations and some charges long after the original agreement with the world
was made. They still published it to the world and his dog, giving the
impression that the world could use the API with Sun's blessing.
We know why they did what they did. The effect was to give the drug away for
free and then charge for later fixes once the addiction set in and companies
were on the hook.
Then the failed mobile device company, Oracle, decided to monetize their IP
(they had attempted to put together a Java phone, if you remember). They sued a
successful mobile device company on the basis of a copyright licence which had
no legal basis (attempted to limit the use of the licensed and copied materials)
and was based on materials not protectable by copyright.
So, a real, published, open API is an agreement, but the Java agreement was
reneged upon by Sun and Oracle.
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Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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