JDK7 with lambda's downloadable

[Neal Gafter]

On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 3:48 PM, Dr Andrew John Hughes
<ahughes at redhat.com>wrote:

> On 10 September 2010 06:39, Neal Gafter <neal at gafter.com> wrote:
> > Does Oracle offer a patent grant so that we can *use* the lambda
> prototype,
> > whether from our own builds or prebuilt by Oracle?  The GPLv2 license
> > doesn't include such a patent grant, and the Java patent promise doesn't
> > apply because the lambda prototype isn't an implementation of any Java
> > platform specification.  Without such a patent grant we would be
> violating
> > Oracle's patent rights by running the prototype.
>
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html (7 & 8)
> http://en.swpat.org/wiki/GPLv2_and_patents
>

I'm afraid sections 7 and 8 are not the least bit helpful.  An allegation of
patent infringement for using GPL2'ed code does not contradict any of the
conditions of the GPLv2 license.  From your latter reference:

Two parts of GPLv2 imply that the distributor gives the downstream
recipients a patent licence. In section 6, GPLv2 says that the distributor
grants a licence to carry out the four freedoms. In section 7, it says that
distribution is banned if the distributor has patent obligations preventing
the recipient from having the four freedoms. So, if the distributor does
distribute, then there is an acknowledgement that the recipient is free to
do everything described in the licence.
The GPLv2 license grants freedoms to copy, distribute, and modify the
sources.  But GPLv2 doesn't grant the recipient the right to use (execute)
the code.  To use the code, you'd need the right to every patent that may be
infringed by executing the code.  That would have to be either an explicit
grant from Oracle, or under some separate license (such as GPLv3).  Oracle
has not granted me, or other non-Oracle openjdk contributors, the patent
rights that we need to use the code.  However, the openjdk contributor
agreement requires that we grant Oracle our patent rights!

It would be a simple matter for Oracle to give us the rights we need to use
the openjdk prototypes, but they have not yet done so.