| As I've said before, the GPL'ed versions of Java are not directly relevant to
this case. They only come in as examples of Sun's lack of concern about
fragmentation caused by implementations that don't use the Java
trademark.
The mistake that keeps getting made is people think the GPL'ed
versions are directly relevant and that leads them to believe that Google
doesn't understand the GPL. Just leave the GPL out of this case entirely
(except when a party mentions it explicitly) and you will have a better
understanding of what is really going on.
Along similar lines, I've also
explained why, even if it was available at the time (which it was not), Google's
use of OpenJDK would have been more troublesome IP-wise than using Harmony.
TL;DR: as Mark Webbink has said, the GPL-2 does not give you iron-clad
patent protection so you are better off getting an explicit patent license in
addition to using the GPL-2 copyright license.
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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 | # ]
| 
