Comment by shmerl
11 years ago
Sun retained restrictions on mobile Java though and it wasn't opened royalty free. That's the whole story with Oracle attacking Google later (on patent basis). And don't forget, MS sided with Oracle there, claiming that APIs should be copyrightable.
So while this development is positive, one should take it with a grain of salt. MS still can't be just trusted blindly.
The releases are under Apache License 2, which has both a patent grant and a patent retaliation clause.
That's good. But that's just the compiler. What about APIs (i.e. .NET)? I don't think Oracle claimed ownership over Java compilers in the example above. It was primarily about Java APIs.
One version of the core libraries (micro framework) are OSS too, along with a bunch of other stuff, but by no means everything or even everything in the base class library.
See slide: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BkT9oBcCQAAHIAV.jpg:large
The precedent has already been set that API's aren't patentable... So I think we're good.
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