| The "Java" trademark was the carrot. The (presumed) patents were the stick.
The patent part was explained quite clearly in the fine article I linked
it in my original post.
For the gory details, read the JSPA. Passing the
TCK test gave you rights to use the "Java" name and also gave you rights to all
the "IP". It was always assumed that "IP" meant patents. The open-source TCK
is explicitly no good for mobile devices. It is no good for any open-source
implementation as well because the field of use restriction is incompatible with
almost all open-source licenses.
Here we are in the middle of a huge trial
where Google is being sued for using Sun "IP" in Android. These suggestions
that Google would have been better off using much more Sun "IP" in Android seem
a bit hare-brained. Especially so since Sun implied it had patent protection
for some of the technology tested by the TCK.
I don't think anyone would
have predicted Oracle was going to claim copyright protection of APIs. It was
even more surprising that those claims managed to survive summary judgment. The
only advantage I can see to using OpenJDK instead of Harmony was the crazy API
claims. Oracle pretty much just made those up. No one could have predicted
it.
Up until now, the big scary IP problem in software has been patents not API
copyrights.
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Our job is to remind ourselves that there are more
contexts than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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