4 ms·

How can the software be free if you need a license for some purposes? Or does it just cost $0?

• danielheath 6y ago
  "Free for noncommercial use" is a common license for IP outside of software.
• bayindirh 6y ago
  Virtualbox comes with PUEL (Personal Use and Evaluation) license, which makes it free for non-commercial use. Java is (was? still is?) free for non-commercial use only. Even if OpenJDK is present. There were some other software which I was using but, forgot their names (since I don't use them anymore).
  • dcminter 6y ago
    That's not correct. OpenJDK is free for commercial use unless you are using Oracle's binaries. Since there's no difference between OpenJDK and Oracle's JDK these days there's generally no reason to use the Oracle tooling.
    • bayindirh 6y ago
      I wanted to say "Presence of OpenJDK doesn't invalidate licensability of Oracle's JDK" but, not being a native English speaker has its downsides :) IIRC OpenJDK had to change/reimplement some image processing algorithms from Kodak et. al but, I'm not sure whether Oracle is using older closed source libraries or OpenJDK's re-implementation in its version.
      • dcminter 6y ago
        Per the following link there are "cosmetic and packaging differences" only as of Java 11: https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-releases-for-java-11-and-later https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-rele...
  • tinus_hn 6y ago
    VirtualBox is GPL, that license is for the extension pack that really for most use cases is not necessary.
    • bayindirh 6y ago
      You're right, it's my foggy mind. Core VBox is indeed GPL, it's the extension's license.