Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee [LWN.net]

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 10, 2010 15:31 UTC (Fri) by DOT (subscriber, #58786)
In reply to: Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee by rahulsundaram
Parent article: Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

You're right that a trademarks can do limited damage to a free software project. If project management gets really bad, the project can be forked with a new name.

But Oracle also claims to hold patents for Java, which OpenJDK gets away with because of a special TCK license that only applies to OpenJDK. Harmony isn't so lucky, so if Oracle is evil, they can sue the pants off distributors like Google. So that's why Apache would really want to get a license for the TCK and the patent license that comes with it.

Since that's impossible unless you're substantially the same as Oracle's version of OpenJDK, Java is not free, and OpenJDK is not free either. Software that can't be forked is not free. A language that can't be legally implemented is not free.

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Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 10, 2010 16:02 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

OpenJDK gets an Oracle patent licence because of its GPL licensing - nothing to do with TCK.

Other implementations, i.e. those independent of OpenJDK, *may* get a patent licence from Oracle if they show they conform, which requires the TCK.

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 13, 2010 4:38 UTC (Mon) by aliguori (guest, #30636) [Link]

It's a bit more subtle than that. Just about any software that you distribute would carry an implicit patent license (at least in the US) for patents you owned. The GPL goes a step further and says that the patent license must be non-discriminatory to future downstreams which basically is anything that can claim to be a derivative product.

So in theory, even if I just copied a few lines of code from OpenJDK and implemented everything else from scratch, I still get full patent licenses. The catch is, if I copy anything from a GPL software, my license must be GPL-compatible and the end-result is something that is effectively GPL'd.

By the virtue of being Apache Licensed, there is no way Harmony can claim to be a derivative product of OpenJDK which means it doesn't get to share the patent license. If they integrated two lines of OpenJDK code and relicensed to GPL, they'd be covered.

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 10, 2010 16:28 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (3 responses)

Your argument that free software must be independently re-implementable, under other, less restrictive licences, doesn't seem like something that'd be universally agreed on. That would imply that when patent grants were added to GPLv3 which extend ONLY to downstream recipients of the software (i.e. NOT to the implementation generally) that they created a non-free licence, or at least less-than-free.

I'd agree that the Java language specification is less than free. It's clearly patent encumbered. However, I find it hard to agree with how you then try to paint OpenJDK as being non-free.

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 10, 2010 17:24 UTC (Fri) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link] (2 responses)

It sure isn't universally agreed on. Many people don't want free software licenses to say anything about patents. And before today, I also thought of the GPL as an utterly free software license, but this "downstream recipients only" concept does not sound free to me at all. If restricted at all, the patent license should be restricted to all GPL licensed software, not just the one project, which would bring it in line with the strong copyleft mechanism that the rest of the GPL employs.

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 13, 2010 3:22 UTC (Mon) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]

I agree that a plain patent license would be better than having the patent licensing bundled with a particular implementation, but if you're producing another implementation with the same license, why not just copy and adapt the code for the covered technique?

If you're developing an implementation with a less restrictive license, it is quite possible that the patent holder has no intention of freely licensing the patent under those terms.

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 13, 2010 15:53 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

And before today, I also thought of the GPL as an utterly free software license, but this "downstream recipients only" concept does not sound free to me at all.

But how else would a licence based on the principles of copyright actually function?

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 10, 2010 18:48 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

If you believe, patent encumbered software is non-free then you would call ffmpeg non-free as well even though it under a GPL license but that is a incomplete and rather misleading perspective since organizations like FSF would point out that patents are not universal and when we have talk about free software licenses, we are usually referring to the copyright licensing and not patent status since in many cases, this is unknown. I think it makes sense to clearly separate encumbrances in copyright, patents and trademarks and not lump them together since they all have very different implications.

To summarize, OpenJDK is free software. Harmony is also free software. The former has a patent grant (being TCK compliant) as well as a patent license due to the GPL license. Harmony has neither. That doesn't make it non-free and a GPL'ed implementation can't protect you. It won't get the patent grant since Apache disagrees with the TCK terms and won't be able to carry the Java trademark however.