Ah, so anyone using GCJ in a product could be sued the same way Google was sued. I didn't know that.
The right conclusion to make seems to be that software patents are bad.
> Ah, so anyone using GCJ in a product could
> be sued the same way Google was sued. I
> didn't know that.
The other conclusion would be that Sun, and now Oracle, are schizophrenic hypocrites: let's not blame it solely on software patents.
I believe the GCJ is vulnerable because, like Dalvik, it's not derived from the OpenJDK.
Well, not being VM based it should be free of some or all of the patents used by Oracle in that part of its lawsuit against Dalvik, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be otherwise vulnerable.
And don't forget OpenJDK derivatives are only patent-proof for patents owned by Sun at the time of its licensing.
> the problem is that Sun/Oracles patent license only covers implementations that passed TCK.
Can they do that, being the OpenJDK GPL-licensed? IIRC, it shields the OpenJDK, as well as GPL-licensed derivatives, from patent lawsuits.
It doesn't protect Apache/MIT/BSD-licensed implementations, but who cares, if there is a GPL-licensed implementation available?
you are right, derivates of OpenJDK are shielded.
Clean-room reimplementation are not though.
Harmony was created to have a non-GPL implementation (and was used by Google for that reason)
If, for no other reason, we should love the GPL for rendering Oracle toothless. :-)
unless they don't TCK certify OpenJDK 7. Then we're back at square one.
No. As long as it's OpenJDK-derived and GPL-licensed, all JDK 7 features can be added.
No. Only features that don't infringe additional patents can be added by the community. If Oracle owns patents covering a particular Java 7 feature, but never releases any GPL code implementing that feature, then the OpenJDK community cannot implement that feature.
Releasing code under the GPL does not give the open source community carte blanche access to all your future patents, perhaps unless those patents are necessarily infringed by the original GPL release.
Indeed. The GPL protection only covers OpenJDK as it is released now. However, Oracle would have to tailor the features in JDK 7 as to be under patents they own or licensed, but that are not used in OpenJDK.
And the OpenJDK folks can always implement around those patents.
Conversely, by not passing TCK you don't get their patent license. Many of the patents in question are difficult (if even possible) to work around if you were to create your alternate implementation.
This means that using any non TCK implementation of Java makes you liable for patent lawsuits (as seen with the Google case).