OpenJDK governing board, constitution

[Dalibor Topic]

On 19.01.09 11:47, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
> Have you noticed that your patron chose to use a license that still is 
> incompatible (GPLv2) and if the response is that the GPLv3 wasn't done 
> at the time, it's done now and despite the fact that it has full 
> copyright on the codebase, hasn't relicensed?  Why hasn't Sun used the 
> GPL v3?  could it be compatibility with AL and other licenses, as well 
> as the explicit patent language? (I actually have no idea...  I'm 
> predicting I'm going to hear some vague handwaving about linux or 
> something)
GPL v3 wasn't done back when the (very reasonable) decision was made to 
follow the established GNU Classpath licensing model, and go with the 
GPL. The first code published by Sun within OpenJDK dates back to 
November, 2006, while GPLv3 was published in June, 2007. So without a 
time machine at their hands to travel forward in time to grab a copy of 
GPLv3 and then go back to 2006 to release the code under it, Sun 
couldn't have possibly released OpenJDK under GPLv3.

Sun uses the GPLv3 family of licenses in other projects: 
OpenOffice.org[1] is released under LGPLv3, which itself is modeled as 
an exception construct on GPLv3. The xVM project is released under GPLv3.

The FSF is working on an update of the exception language for GPLv3 for 
the different FSF-led projects using exception constructs like the 
Classpath exception. Once the FSF finishes their work, I expect that 
free runtime projects including OpenJDK will look into what it would 
take to adopt those updates. Since there is no pressing problem with the 
current licensing a move to GPLv3 would address, there is no pressing 
need for OpenJDK to switch to GPLv3 right away, before the FSF finishes 
the work they're doing.

For OpenJDK, the compatibility issues between GPLv2 and GPL-incompatible 
licenses in the OpenJDK code base have been dealt with by adding an 
assembly exception to the GPL.

cheers,
dalibor topic

[1]  http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-licensing.html#whylgplv3

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