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Comment by macemoneta | Hacker News Reader

As background, from WikiPedia:

"On November 13, 2006, Sun released much of Java as open source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). On May 8, 2007, Sun finished the process, making all of Java's core code available under free software/open-source distribution terms, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright."

If Sun willingly made the code GPL licensed, and Google isn't using anything outside the GPL code, even if some of the technologies were covered by patents I don't see Oracle having a case. Right now, this sounds very much like the SCO - Linux suit that dragged on forever and went nowhere.

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Google is using NONE of the Sun code. They use their own VM, and use the Apache Harmony class libraries. That's why it isn't called "Java"

The Sun release has some weird field-of-use restrictions associated with it.

Giving out software under the GPL v2 does not mean that you grant others a patent license, that isn't within the scope of the GPL v2.

That's not true. See section 7 of the GPL. In part:

For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

However, it seems Sun can relicence the software under whatever they want, and the current versions of it wouldn't be under GPL anymore. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know exactly what this implies.

"However, it seems Sun can relicence"

You mean Oracle, of course, and that seems to make a big difference.

So you're saying that it grants users of the GPL code an exception from the patent owned by the original developers?

In that case, wouldn't the exception only be extended to Google if their implementation of Java was not independent from Sun's implementation? Because Devrak was derived from Apache Harmony, it might not share any code with Oracle Java.

Considering that Sun released Java before the GPL v3 was finished, I assume that it's under the GPL v2. v2 doesn't have the same patent guarantees that v3 does, and these guarantees were an important reason for creating v3. Specifically, the GPL v3 specifically prohibits this sort of "make it free software and then sue over the patents". The GPL FAQ claims that in some countries, releasing software under the GPL v2 constitutes a patent license, but I don't think that applies in the US.

There's no need to assume when authoritative information is but a few keystrokes away. And yes, it is under the GPL v2 + Classpath exception, except for Java ME which is under straight GPL v2.

Exactly this is the core question here.

I am really curious about how the law sees this.

And I would really wonder if they decide against Google. It looks almost like a trap of Sun/Oracle then, kind of "hey, here, use our code, it is open source now grin".

Or to put it different: Why did they use the GPL licence?

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