You want to try and build a business doing that?
You can always claim it's based on OpenJDK.
> and you run the risk of unknown lawsuits on hidden grounds from a large and litigious company who you're trying to outmaneuver to avoid giving them money
I won't be the one to indulge such a paranoid delusion. Oracle won't sue you for using OpenJDK because they know it would be a lost cause.
Even if it's based on OpenJDK, you still wouldn't get any patent protection. I wouldn't put my trust in Oracle to not sue me over anything...
In many countries, distributing software under GPLv2 provides recipients with an implicit patent license to exercise their rights under the GPL.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#v2OrLaterPatentLice...
Many countries, but not all... and it's not clear in the case of v2.
I agree that v3 is more clear about patents than v2, but it's unfair to call a protection that was never used (possibly because it has been a successful deterrent) "weak". It can only be weak if it doesn't protect. So far, it has been effective.
I think the wording in v2 is clear enough. One cannot impose any additional restriction and cannot force fees on users and re-distributors. That protects not only against patents but from anything that looks like one.
It also had a strong community: Apache, JBoss, etc.
However WebLogic and Sun are now part of Oracle. Apple has backed off on involvement. This leaves Oracle and IBM. IBM are masters of maintaining technology, so we know Java will be maintained. But the ecosystem is being eroded.
If the community is being eroded too, Java advocates everywhere will look somewhere else. Just look at the thread here!
COBOL was too big to fail too. This will not be acceptable to many forward looking enterprise software companies. Expect to see an increasing number of "app servers" appear for Python et al.
Right, the writing is already on the wall, because guys like us have already made our mind up that it is on the wall. They have lost the mind-share. Almost every reason for Java's ascension, has been eroded away, the future of Java is exactly what everyone was running from when they found Java. That's why I asked, Oracle's refusal to work with Apache marks the beginning of the end in my mind. It pretty much states openly their plan. The plan that all the "fear mongers" where warning us about. I asked people thought on the Java replacement, because I really would love to know what people see as the successor. For me at least now with the Apache thing decided, it is not a matter of if, it is a matter of "to what".
Great, so I'm free to take a server implementation and port it to mobile phones, right?
Free as in what?