

Free but Shackled - The Java Trap - Rickasaurus
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

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cscotta
Notice Stallman's revised comment at the head of the article:

 _"Since this article was first published, Sun has relicensed most of its Java
platform reference implementation under the GNU General Public License, and
there is now a free development environment for Java. Thus, the Java language
as such is no longer a trap."_

This case is among few high-profile instances in which the GPL may not be free
enough -- that is, Oracle may have a strong claim despite Sun's licensing of
much of the JVM and JDK under the GPL, because the provisions of the license
only extend to VMs which fully implement the Java spec. The license grant for
the Java specification explicitly does _not_ apply to VMs implementing a sub-
or super-set.

See the patent grant released in Dec 2006 [1] – specifically the portion where
it's stated that the implementor must "not modify, subset, superset or
otherwise extend the Licensor Name Space," and that the VM must "[pass] the
Technology Compatibility Kit." Under this interpretation, Google's App Engine
platform might also be considered non-compliant, depending on the underlying
VM.

While I personally choose to release code under BSD or MIT-style licenses to
avoid the GPL's viral restrictions, it is interesting to consider cases where
liberal licensing alone is not enough to ensure the liberty of a platform.

[1] <http://java.sun.com/javase/6/jdk-6u21-doc-license.txt>

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Rickasaurus
It seems as though licenses these days, to be truly free, should contain a
clause giving up all rights to patent claims against said code.

~~~
ekiru
The GPL version 3 includes a similar clause. You don't have to give up your
patents. You just have to license them to anyone who has rights to use the
code from a copyright perspective. If I understand it correctly, this gives
the GPL sharper teeth, since someone who violates the GPL not only loses the
distribution/derivative rights from the copyright license, but also the patent
license.

~~~
api
Hmm... so you could use patents as a club to enforce dual licensing with GPLv3
then. Violate the GPL and you lose your patent license, so now you're a patent
infringer too. At the same time, you're FOSS-friendly since your patents are
meaningless to FOSS projects.

~~~
rbanffy
The GPL is one of the most brilliant hacks ever.

