JavaFX 11 is released
Sverre Moe
sverre.moe at gmail.com
Wed Sep 19 07:22:14 UTC 2018
Great work with JavaFX 11. Looking forward to trying it out.
About license for OpenJDK and OpenJFX:
Given that OpenJDK has a GPLv2-CE license, is it possible to use it with a
commercial application, when bundling with a native runtime, or do we need
a commercial license from Oracle? We will not be providing the source code
for our application which is required when using software with GPL.
We deliver both software and hardware to our customers. The server hardware
running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, which provides the OpenJDK builds,
comes preinstalled with our applications. SLES 15.0 has the OpenJDK 10
build, but I reckon later SP will probably provide OpenJDK 11. We pay for
SLES and are getting LTSS updates from SUSE which includes the OpenJDK.
Given that Oracle JDK which we have used up to now to build our application
cannot any longer be used in production without license from Oracle, we
then would either need a license or use the OpenJDK to build and deliver
with out application. Using the OpenJDK I am not sure we can because of the
GPLv2 license it is under.
I guess it would not be an issue if we did not bundle the JRE runtime, but
required the client computer to have it installed, like we do today when
using Java Web Start. However with the removal of Java Web Start we are
looking into creating native packages for Linux, Windows and Mac.
When it comes to third party Java libraries we have been carefully to only
use those which is possible in a commercial application, like Apache, BSD
and LGPL, such as JFXtras (BSD License 2.0), Medusa (Apache License v2.0)
and JFreechart-FX (LGPL 2.1).
Now that we will provide JavaFX in the same way as a OpenJFX dependency I
have the same concern with it as I do with OpenJDK if it also is under
GPLv2.
/Sverre
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