On Sun, 2011-05-08 at 23:14 +0100, Dr Andrew John Hughes wrote: > From the OpenJDK source code base, it looks like the proprietary parts > of Oracle's JDK slot in pretty cleanly to the OpenJDK tree. If this > is the case, is there any good reason why GPL binaries could not be > provided, with the option to add on the proprietary extensions > (alternative font renderer, colour management, graphics renderer, > plugin, web start) under a separate license? It seems pretty easy to > me to provide a default which downloads both parts for the majority of > users who don't care, while allowing those who do to just pick the > Free part.
Yes, that is the idea behind the "Assembly Exception" to the GPL that OpenJDK uses. http://openjdk.java.net/legal/assembly-exception.html and http://openjdk.java.net/legal/exception-modules-2007-05-08.html That allows you to distribute everything under the GPL with the exception of those proprietary modules. Of course that doesn't work for GNU/Linux distributions, which will want to use a fully free JDK distribution, but it can for Oracle (or anybody else) who wants to distribute all the free code freely, plus some binary blobs. Cheers, Mark
