You forgot to mention the years that Sun strung Harmony along (since JCP decisions at the start of OpenJDK development in 2006!), a behavior that Oracle came out vocally and publicly against until they acquired Sun.
> yes, licensed under GPL not ASL.
I feel like you don't really read the posts you respond to. That kind of thinking was exactly the impetus for the non-"Java" forking I was referring to. Hypothetical: someone forks OpenJDK and makes incompatible changes to the APIs. They have no interest in passing the TCK or following the restrictions in the OpenJDK Community TCK License Agreement. Are they able to release this as long as they don't call it Java? More concretely, should GNU Classpath be shut down?
Precedent up to this point says that that both are fine and have to be tolerated. Jonathan Schwartz said both bothered them but had to be tolerated, but you've made clear that his opinion couldn't possibly be relevant. We'll just have to see how this case turns out.
>Jonathan Schwartz said both bothered them but had to be tolerated, but you've made clear that his opinion couldn't possibly be relevant. We'll just have to see how this case turns out.
His "endorsement" is not a license or a permission to break copyright/license agreements.
He said many things that were pro-Android. Endorsements, explanation, etc. it doesn't matter. What he said was not a license.
What questions? anyone can fork OpenJDK and release it under a different license due to the classpath exceptions, and if they pass the TCK they can call their software Java. If not they cant't. but PhoneME doesn't have the classpath exception and that's why Google didn't like that.
Here's Andy Rubin's email:
"We are building a platform where the entire purpose is to let people differentiate on top of it," said Android chief Andy Rubin in an August 11, 2007, e-mail that Oracle is touting in its case against Google (PDF). "Sun chose GPL for this exact reason so that companies would need to come back to them and take a direct license and pay royalties."
Quotes out of context might work on juries where anyone with technical experience has been excused, but he's clearly talking about their GPL code (which they went to great lengths to not use) because no-one in the industry thinks API's are copyrightable or should be. If they did they'd have worked around it like they did the GPL code.
>you're going to have to expect non-"Java" open source forks.
yes, licensed under GPL not ASL.
Here's what Andy Rubin had to say about GPL:
"The problem with GPL in embedded systems [such as smartphones and tablets] is that it's viral [...]"
"Sun chose GPL for this exact reason so that companies would need to come back to them and take a direct license and pay royalties."