Interesting thoughts. This article kind of touches on it (as does the link through to Carlo Daffara's blog).
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/08/oracles-java-lawsuit-undermines-its-open-source-credibility.ars IANAL but I think the question (yet to be answered / tested in court perhaps?) is whether releasing under GPLv2 actually infers you are giving up your patent rights. I think Sun thought that GPLv2 doesn't specifically infer this, because of this part: "Sun also provided royalty-free patent grants for the specific intellectual property that is needed to develop a clean-room implementation of the specification. This grant covers only complete and fully compliant implementations, not implementations that provide a subset or superset of the Java environment." Of course I'm reading this all "nth" hand but it appears based on this that Sun actually used patents for some leverage also. I am definitely not wanting to defend Oracle, but let's be honest here - Sun were trying to use patents as a "deterrent" even if they never entered into any suits, were they not? I think basically I am the same as everyone else. I want to get paid for my work, but I want everyone else to give me their work for nothing. :-) On Aug 19, 1:02 am, Fabrizio Giudici <fabrizio.giud...@tidalwave.it> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > I have posted the following question > tohttp://blog.headius.com/2010/08/my-thoughts-on-oracle-v-google.html, > but it has been lost someway. There were other considerations too, but > I'll focus on a single point. > > In the end, all the fears around are about the OpenJDK not being safe > enough from patents, because it's GPLv2 and allegedly it only provides > partial protection from patents. > > Ok, my question: Linux is GPLv2. Torvalds explicitly refused GPLv3, > which increases the patent protection. So, we should infer two things: > > 1) The Linux community is naive about the harm that patents can do to > GPLv2 projects, Linux included. > 2) Linux itself is not open enough and risks to be harassed by > patents, as the OpenJDK. BTW, the Android core is Linux again and > GPLv2, so it's at stake too. > > There's something that doesn't convince me in this reasoning, but my > two statements above seems to be a logical consequential of the > assumption that GPLv2 is weak. Thoughts? > > - -- > Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager > Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." > java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici -www.tidalwave.it/people > fabrizio.giud...@tidalwave.it > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla -http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iEYEARECAAYFAkxr9gMACgkQeDweFqgUGxcenwCbBuYtFAX4PBHpILZP/21bUuQO > KkMAn1NT9jRM/bQ7B+mIaX6kxy/CDg04 > =2w+f > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
