Golly gee whiz.
Programmers are licensed to use the language and
review the
documentation. If I
want to implement a variant of ArrayList that
follows Oracle's published interface
called List, I may. I just cannot add it
to the java package.
Oracle is arguing that they have a right to require
other companies license
re-implementations of java. I thought about it and
think Oracle is wrong. And
Oracle did over-reach with the claim APIs are
copyrightable. I'm pleased
good people whose books (and languages) I use are on
my side.
But, I do a lot of stuff in java. I do a lot of stuff in
racket. I'm in courtship
mode with scala, which runs on the jvm. (It takes me a
couple of years of
thinking before I apply a language.) I cannot speak to
professors who reject a
language because one stakeholder wants money from a
re-implementer using it
commercially. Honestly, and I apologize that this
judgmental, I cannot speak to a
professor who lets politics override
effectiveness as a criteria for evaluating a
teaching language. Then again, is
java the best language for teaching
programming? I
don't think so, but I have
no stakes in that game. But, as a
programmer who uses java, unless
Oracle changes its licensing so that
something I want
or need to do costs me
money, I'm sticking with a language with which I have
done and can do good
work. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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