Comment by McGlockenshire
11 years ago
The releases are under Apache License 2, which has both a patent grant and a patent retaliation clause.
11 years ago
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.
From that perspective yes. But MS clearly showed they didn't like that. It was about the attitude in general. If MS want to really open things up, they should formally have an open license for APIs that would protect them from MS patent and copyright threats.
I really hope that the ruling by judge Alsup stands, but Microsoft and Oracle is currently trying to overturn that ruling and make API's copyrightable.