So what do the proponents of Oracle's acquisition of Sun think now? [LWN.net]

So what do the proponents of Oracle's acquisition of Sun think now?

Posted Aug 22, 2010 0:52 UTC (Sun) by FlorianMueller (subscriber, #32048)
In reply to: So what do the proponents of Oracle's acquisition of Sun think now? by pdickey
Parent article: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android (ars technica)

IBM didn't have an issue with the Hercules Project, because it was mainly (or completely at the time) being used in accordance with the Licensing Agreement (or if it wasn't being used in accordance with the agreement, no one was saying that). Plus the fact that it was free (just my opinion).

IBM mentioned Hercules in a RedBook (documentation piece) in 2002. It then removed that reference in the next edition. So even many years before the TurboHercules company was founded, IBM changed its stance.

In terms of the license agreement at issue, that's the z/OS agreement and chances are that out of many thousands of Hercules users, some perhaps didn't adhere religiously to the z/OS terms. Not that I know of any -- but statistically it's hard to imagine that so many people would all have complied with those terms 100%, all of the time.

TurboHercules wants to use it in a way that is not in accordance with their licensing agreement, and make people pay for that right.

The "pay" part relates only to z/OS, the proprietary operating system. For proprietary software one has to pay. Of course, if IBM decided to give it away for free, that would be appreciated, but no reasonable person would demand that.

IMHO, isn't that against the code of Open Source software?

Absolutely not. The key requirements for open source are defined by the Open Source Definition (and for free software by the Free Software Definition). This means among other things that you must have the right to modify and to redistribute. You must have access for free -- to the open source program -- if you wish.

TurboHercules doesn't violate any of those principles. If you get an Oracle 11g database server running on Linux, the Linux part is open source and Oracle 11g is closed source, running on top of Linux.

However, you have to pay those guys to be able to use the software for anything other than the terms of your License Agreement.

No. TurboHercules doesn't force you to pay for the Hercules open source program. You can get that free of charge if you wish, and of course you get the source code.

The "pay" part relates only to z/OS, which is proprietary. Think of my example with Oracle 11g running on Linux. Oracle 11g is closed source, Linux is open source.

To make it even clearer: if you emulate z/Linux with Hercules, then you don't have to pay anyone and there's no restriction preventing you from doing it. Similarly, you can also run MySQL or PostgreSQL on top of Linux, and then it's all free of charge.

Those closed-source/open-source combinations are pretty ubiquitous. You only have a problem with a license if it's "copyleft" like the GPL and you don't comply with the requirement to make the source code of a derived work available. In the Linux/Oracle example, note that running applications on top of Linux isn't a "copyleft" case because of an exception.

"Here's Ubuntu. You are only allowed to use the non-restricted sources. However, if you want access to the restricted sources, you have to pay LinuxCo2, because they are providing a commercial version of Ubuntu that is allowed to use restricted sources."

The key respect in which this doesn't relate to the TurboHercules situation is that they don't restrict any Hercules sources or the use of Hercules.

If anyone restricts, it's IBM. But again, don't forget that Hercules emulates the CPU instruction set, not the operating system. The operating system runs in emulation. In that emulation you can also run z/Linux. If, however, you want to run z/OS, then that's an issue between you as a customer and IBM. If TurboHercules helps you by organizing a license for all TurboHercules customers, that's also fine -- as long as the open source program continues to be available on open source terms.

By running something in emulation you don't create a new combined program. If you run proprietary software on an open source virtualizer like Xen, then the software running in virtualization is also a different thing from the virtualizer. One can be closed source and the other open source.

In looking at the letters between TurboHercules and IBM, I noticed that some of the patents were covering Virtual Machines. So, I wonder if those would be capable of being used as Prior Art in the Google v Oracle case

There are probably many many different patents out there on virtual machines. A patent can serve as prior art in principle, but those who now probably look for prior art against those Java patents will look everywhere I'm sure.

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