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

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 10, 2010 16:28 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

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.

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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?