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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.

• ori_b 16y ago
  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.
  • jimbokun 16y ago
    "However, it seems Sun can relicence" You mean Oracle, of course, and that seems to make a big difference.
  • jamesgeck0 16y ago
    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.