[Opensim-dev] Clarification on Licencing and Moving Forward as a Community

[Rob Nelson]

Java has a completely different licensing scheme though;  In order to be 
excluded from lawsuits from Oracle/Sun, your code/binary must pass a 
series of tests performed by a closed-source testing system. From what I 
understand, Oracle refused to give the sourcecode to this system to 
Apache/Google, and therefore, they could not use it.

With SL, the entire system /sans servers/ was opensourced, so they don't 
have a position to sue for presentation or protocol.  In addition, I 
believe that reverse-engineering projects are given some leeway in 
copyright court in the U.S., but IANAL, I haven't paid much attention to 
copyrights until about 2 years ago. :P

Rob

On 11/6/2010 12:38 PM, Daniel Smith wrote:
>
> My thought is:  just be prepared for the nightmare scenario.  To me, 
> that would be
> something like Oracle buying LL.  What they just did to the OpenOffice 
> developers
> gives me pause:
>
> http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/oracle-to-openoffice-staff-libre-to-leave-009052.php
>
> Obviously the OpenOffice situation is different, but it's another data 
> point as to
> the *attitude* of a company like Oracle.
>
> I think a lot of folks want to see OpenSim in an unassailable position 
> for virtual worlds,
> in the manner that the Apache server has been for the web.
>
> Hmm, perhaps a better story to reference - Oracle suing Google over 
> java...
> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/08/oracles-java-lawsuit-undermines-its-open-source-credibility.ars
>
> The SCO Unix debacle also comes to mind :)
>
> Daniel
>
>
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