Licensing questions

[Mario Torre]

Il giorno gio, 21/01/2010 alle 08.20 -0500, Geir Magnusson Jr. ha
scritto:
> On Jan 21, 2010, at 8:00 AM, Mario Torre wrote:
> 
> > Il giorno gio, 21/01/2010 alle 07.44 -0500, Geir Magnusson Jr. ha
> > scritto:
> > 
> >> It's far from a myth.  Sun has been open about the fact that they won't give the ASF a TCK license for Java SE in order to protect licensing revenue.
> > 
> > Usual story as always with you, Geir.
> 
> Because it's a continuing problem.  
> 
> I and others are passionate about having the freedom to implement the Java SE spec and pass the TCK, and we haven't given up the fight.  You may not understand it now, but having one commercial entity able to assert direct control over any independent implementation of any spec, Java or otherwise, is a bad thing for FLOSS and software in general.
> 
> Sun's recalcitrance in dealing with Google over ME led us to Android (based on Apache Harmony's class libraries!), which is great because of the shake it's giving the mobile space, but I do have reservations simply because I'm not interested in seeing Java fork.  Talk about Pyrrhic victories...

Not sure what to add, we're going into the usual endless loop here and i
got work to do...

The TCK issue is concrete, right.

You wrote back then and I link here what Mark replied in his blog, which
is in good wordings a point of view that I share almost completely about
the issue:

http://gnu.wildebeest.org/diary/2007/04/21/openjck/

You name Android. But Android isn't so Free as you imply. It's locked
exactly as the ME market, and in addition to that, they use as a basis
an implementation that (forgive me if I say that) is far for being
usable: the fact that they add, in house, all bells and whistles, add
their own stack on it, and just develop that, without back
contributions, doesn't mean it's open.

And this is allowed because your funny license[1] explicitly allows
that, but as you say, every one is free to chose whatever license wants
for his own projects, and this is a point where I completely agree with
you (shall the world end up today because I said that!).

There's nothing that prevent you to port OpenJDK to any Symbian phone,
for example, just sit down and do it.

> Note that the individual asked about commercial, embedded use, which isn't always compatible
> with the reciprocity conditions of the GPL, CP exception notwithstanding.

Yeah, indeed. Although I have some experience on that and 99% of the
time the CP is what makes the difference.

> I'm guessing no.

Like Mark would say, you really believe I'm just an "anarchist free
software punk".

But, ok it doesn't matter... Once again, let's go back to the topic, I
quote Andrews' FUD free reply: "The usual advice with free software is
that if you need legal advice, consult a lawyer". That's all you need.

Cheers,
Mario

[1] Yeah, truth is, by saying funny, I'm pushing it to provoke you a
bit, because I honestly don't think the ASL is a bad license at all.