Re:Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android
by lkjhgfhjk on Thursday August 12, 2010 @11:13PM
(#1599948)
So take Sun's GPL Java, modify it - by say deleting all the sun code and inserting your own, then release the changes back to Oracle under the GPL!
Re:Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android
by cookiecaper on Thursday August 12, 2010 @11:32PM
(#1599984)
I don't think that would hold up. The judge would consider it a new work, not a derivative, and therefore not covered by Sun's release of patents for the official JVM.
Sun/Oracle's Java implementation was released under the GPLv2, which doesn't include a patent license. I don't know if they included any patent license with the open source release. Even if they did, it doesn't help Google, because Android doesn't use the Sun/Oracle code, so it wouldn't benefit from any patent license that goes with it. Android is based on the Apache Harmony libraries on top of Google's own Dalvik VM. (Most of the Android code is Apache-licensed.) That code was all developed independent of Sun's Java and the implementation might infringe their patents, even though it doesn't use their code.