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

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 10, 2010 16:02 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee by DOT
Parent article: Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

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.

to post comments

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.