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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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Not quite... | 275 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Not quite...
Authored by: naka on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 10:23 PM EDT

In this case, Sun did release Java under the GPL, but Google isn't using that licence (nor do they need to IMO).

Normally when company A open sources something, company B will use that licence and whoever buys A won't be able to do anything but make up some new kind of legal charleston and hope that it catches on.

It is indeed *like* what Oracle is doing... but not exactly.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Open source is not give away all copyright for free
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 11:56 PM EDT
Open sourced normally means it is under a license you must conform to or else
you are not granted use of the copyrights.

If you don't agree to the open source license you can still be sued.

Michael

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

I have a bad feeling already...
Authored by: jjs on Tuesday, May 01 2012 @ 06:04 AM EDT
Please don't go down the rat hole about GPL. Sun declared
the language free for all - not Open Source, but effectively
public domain. CEO Schwartz, on the stand in this trial,
said it was for all to use, as long as they didn't use the
Java trademark without passing the TCK. Can Oracle now
come back and say "we're the new owners, and cannot be held
to what the previous owners promised - and can also go after
you for doing what the previous owners said was OK."

Think about this from a contract standpoint - Oracle is
publicly claiming that not only can they not renew a
contract, they can act as if a contract didn't ever exist.
If so, what is the value of contracts?

If Oracle wins, they are setting some bad new law for
companies in the future.

And it has nothing to do with GPL or Open Sourcing Java
source code.

---
(Note IANAL, I don't play one on TV, etc, consult a practicing attorney, etc,
etc)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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