JFX on iOS - legal barriers to community doing the work?

[Mario Torre]

2012/10/25 Daniel Zwolenski <zonski at gmail.com>:
> I think the "official" stance regarding JFX on iOS is that the community
> will build it once everything is open source?
>
> I assume this will mean someone porting "OpenJDK+OpenJFX" to the iOS
> platform?
>
> According to everything I can find on the web, GPL is not legally allowed
> in the iOS app store because the two licences clash.
>
> As I understand it both OpenJDK and OpenJFX are distributed under the GPL
> licence.
>
> Doesn't that mean if the community did this port, no one would be legally
> allowed to deploy it to the app store anyway?

IANAL, but as far as I understand, yes, you are right.

However, if you contribute back this code Oracle can.

Depending on how Oracle want to play steward in this process, once
this port is contributed back (remember that you signed the OCA in
this case), Oracle could still ship a version of JavaFX/OpenJDK on iOS
that is not GPL. This is, of course, less than ideal. This is already
the case for every GPL application and library, so I think a better
way would be for the companies involved (especially Oracle, which has
a good weight), to try to push Apple to change this stupid policy, but
this is entirely Apple fault, and the reason why iOS is so crippled.

I would also love to hear what Oracle thinks on the matter (since this
is likely a stopper for them too).

Cheers,
Mario

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