Need Advice to see if we can ship OpenJDK/JRE with Commercial App

[Geir Magnusson Jr.]

have you read the GPL recently?

geir

On Oct 7, 2011, at 3:50 AM, Ben Evans wrote:

> First of all, IANAL.
> 
> Having said that, if you aren't modifying the OpenJDK then all you are
> doing is bundling a piece of unmodified GPL software into the same
> delivery mechanism as your proprietary application. Which should be
> fine - just include the GPL, a README which explains where to get the
> source for OpenJDK from, and don't claim that OpenJDK is your work, or
> anything to do with you.
> 
> So you *can* do this. The question really is - *should* you do this.
> And there are very good reasons for not bundling a platform along with
> an application. I'm sure other people will chime in with other very
> good reasons why not to do this, but:
> 
> Field Support Overhead. This is a huge one. You can't possibly test
> your app+JRE bundle on every conceivable machine configuration that
> your customers will have. Yet, by shipping a combined app+JRE, you
> have made your company responsible for support of that combined bundle
> in the eyes of your customers. The costs of servicing support requests
> from your customers will increase enormously if you are shipping a
> private JRE along with the app. If Windows is one of the platforms you
> need to support, then this problem becomes an absolute nightmare,
> especially if your customers are remote (and even worse if your
> customers are essentially corporate desktop users).
> 
> If you're absolutely set on going this route, take a look at the
> profit model for your app, and the support cost model. Work out how
> many additional support cases it would take before your profit margin
> is eaten up. If that number isn't very, very large, then don't do
> this.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Ben
> 
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 8:34 AM, Dan Tran <dantran at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Sorry about the confusion I've made.
>> 
>> Basically, I would like to ship OpenJDK's JRE with my App, instead of
>> Oracle's JRE which requires a license/support fee.
>> 
>> Shipping OpenJDK with our app is purely for the convenient to our
>> customer.  There is no reason for us to modify OpenJDK
>> 
>> However, according to OpenJDK license which is GPLv2 with "Classpath"
>> Exception.  So my guess is we can ship OpenJDK with our app without
>> the obligation of open up our source code.
>> 
>> However, to be very sure, I  would like to ping this forum to see if
>> I miss any thing, and also to find out if any one are on the same
>> route
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> -Dan
>> 
>> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 11:26 PM, Ben Evans
>> <benjamin.john.evans at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi Dan,
>>> 
>>> Your mails are quite hard to understand (and I'm guessing English
>>> isn't your first language).
>>> 
>>> Could you try explaining again exactly what you want to do and why you
>>> want to bundle a JRE or JDK with your app?
>>> 
>>> Are you making modifications to OpenJDK? Or is your application just a
>>> Java-based app and you want to ship a JRE for convenience?
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> Ben
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Dan Tran <dantran at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> ie, little interests on commercial company willing to ship openjdk
>>>> with their app and but ship with Oracle JRE and pay for license fee.
>>>> 
>>>> -D
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 10:58 PM, Henri Gomez <henri.gomez at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Since I found so little discussion about ability to ship OpenJDK with
>>>>>> a commercial app ( instead of Oracle JRE, and not paying for license
>>>>>> fee ), it sounds like OpenJDK 7 is NOT ready for prime time yet?
>>>>> 
>>>>> What do you means by 'not ready for prime time yet' ?
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>