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| Authored by: hardmath on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 09:31 AM EDT |
There is a TCK available to implementers of the OpenJDK, but
there are a few gotchas. OpenJDK7 is actually an adoption
of IcedTea7 by Oracle as its "reference implementation" of
Java SE7, which means it is distinct from its binary
distribution of Java SE7 containing proprietary pieces.
The TCK for OpenJDK is not itself available under an open
source license. It's tendentious to say the TCK is needed
to confer rights to make copies and derivative works based
on OpenJDK, since that's what the GPLv2 + Classpath
Exception license of OpenJDK does. However the trademark
"Java" and any essential patents arguably will be conferred
by this limited TCK.
The main issue is that the Harmony license is Apache, not
GPL, so in using the Harmony material Google was not
obligated to apply GPL licensing to that portion of Android.
Google at the time considered this an advantage in striking
deals with the telcos for Android.
So Google cannot rely on the OpenJDK for a source code
license (nor do they seem to need it). However I've argued
(perhaps not loudly) that by GPL'ing the APIs, Sun
(subsequently Oracle) opened the door to studying and
learning the API naming structure (one of the Four Freedoms)
for use in one's own implementation. In any case Judge
Alsup has already ruled there is no copyright protection for
the Java API class and method names per se. What is not yet
clear is whether after abstracting/filtering the
unprotectable elements of the APIs, there is any expressive
element left to merit copyright protection.
My impression is that Judge Alsup will invite a motion from
Google on this issue as soon as Phase I testimony wraps up,
and that he's already thought the issue over. He's just
giving Oracle the opportunity to present evidence of such
elements. But Oracle continues to pontificate about the
hard work and difficulty in preparing the APIs, refusing to
buy a clue.
There's also the question of what Sun or Oracle may have
contributed to the 37 accused APIs. At a first cut the
naming of some package javax rather than java was originally
intended as a staging of new eXtensions to the platform
APIs, to be followed ultimately by pushing them out under
the java namespace once they'd matured. However this scheme
broke down as programmers adopted and depended on these
extensions in the javax namespace so quickly that it became
impractical to treat that merely as a staging area.
The point is the Java Community Process members were very
active in contributing code as well as API design to the
base. Oracle's claims that Google broke the community rules
by not contributing back are utterly refutable.
---
Do the arithmetic or be doomed to talk nonsense. -- John McCarthy (1927-2011)[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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