freebsd vs. netbsd

[Aryeh Friedman]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 2:32 AM Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions <
freebsd-questions at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 01:32:08 -0400, Aryeh Friedman wrote:
> >Complete misunderstanding
>
> I haven't written anything, I just posted two links. Oracle created a
> self-image experts tend to misunderstand. It's a good reason for people
> who are neither computer nor law experts, to stay a way from
> programming something or programming with something, that in any sort is
> related to Oracle. So unless somebody doesn't have the comprehensive
> knowledge you've got, it's wise to be sceptic and to mess about with
> something, that is completely unrelated to Oracle.
>

Take your own advice.   OpenJDK is licensed under GPL and includes a
complete copy of the Java standard library (in source form) as the
licensing FAQ on Oracle site says (thus the entire Java standard library is
under GPL):

"Are there any restrictions on what I can do with it?

OpenJDK is released under an well-known open-source licensing model, that
places no restrictions on your ability to run OpenJDK. Please check the
legal section of the OpenJDK project site to understand the scope of your
rights and obligations."

Perhaps you (and other people) are mistaking the "Oracle JDK" for OpenJDK,
they are NOT the same as stated in the same FAQ:

"Is Oracle JDK based on OpenJDK?

Yes. Oracle JDK is based on the OpenJDK source code. In addition, it
contains closed-source components. The final result is licensed under a
Binary Code License."  [Note none of those closed source components are
part of the standard library {i.e. in packages java.* or javax.*}]

Also before you say OpenJDK is not a full implementation of the Java
standard wikipedia on OpenJDK says:

"OpenJDK is the official reference implementation of Java SE since version
7"

Perhaps you think due to a misreading of the lawsuit that no one else can
create a JDK.  Again from the same FAQ:

"Doesn't OpenJDK make other Java SE implementations superfluous?

No. Java users can benefit from a choice of compatible Java SE
implementations provided by multiple vendors under various commercial
models. The different compatible Java SE implementations compete on aspects
such as tuning to different architectures, performance, tools and
deployment." [Note other JDK's and components can also be made
non-commercial also such as GNU has done or commercial such as IBM has
done].

So the real issue of the Google lawsuit was that Google had produced a JVM
that was bytecode incompatible with the JVM defined in the language and JVM
specs and claimed to call it Java (in this case "Java" is a trademark of
Oracle).   Oracle objected because of the incompatibility it broke one of
the requirements of the spec which is 100% byte level compatibility between
different JVM's for stuff defined in the spec.  Google refused to modify
their JVM to meet the standard and thus Oracle revoked permission to use
the trademark (not the contents of the specs or any other technical aspect
they only required that Google call it something other than Java).   This
is no different then why FreeBSD can not legally call itself "Unix" it has
to say "Unix-like".   If Google called their JVM "Java-like" then the issue
is solved yet Google refused to.

-- 
Aryeh M. Friedman, Lead Developer, http://www.PetiteCloud.org