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Why the CLASSPATH exception is quite relevant to source code | 503 comments | Create New Account
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Why the CLASSPATH exception is quite relevant to source code
Authored by: Ian Al on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 09:15 AM EDT
I think the key point is that neither the Java API Specification nor the TCK are freely available or available under a free and open licence like the GPL.
OPENJDK COMMUNITY TCK LICENSE AGREEMENT V 1.1

1.0 DEFINITIONS

1.1 “Compatible Licensee Implementation” means a Licensee Implementation that (i) fully implements the Java Specification, including all its required interfaces and functionality; (ii) does not modify, subset, superset or otherwise extend the Licensor Name Space, or include any public or protected packages, classes, Java interfaces, fields, methods or constructors within the Licensor Name Space other than those required/authorized by the Specification or Specifications being implemented; and (iii) passes the TCK (including satisfying the requirements of the applicable TCK Users Guide) for such Specification.

2.0 LICENSE GRANTS

2.1 License Grant for the TCK. (a) Limited Grant. Subject to and conditioned upon its Licensee Implementation being substantially derived from OpenJDK Code and, if such Implementation has or is to be distributed to a third party, its being distributed under the GPL License, Oracle hereby grants to Licensee, to the extent of Oracle's Intellectual Property Rights in the TCK, a worldwide, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license to use the TCK internally and solely for the purpose of developing and testing Licensee Implementation. No license is granted for any other purpose, including any of the activities described in Section 2.1(b).
You cannot do anything with OpenJDK that only uses part of it or is not substantially similar to OpenJDK because you infringe on the SSO in the closed and proprietary Java API Specification.

If it was not for that, CLASSPATH would be an added comfort to using OpenJDK source code.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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