On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 7:13 AM, Seth <seth.schroe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Given Oracle's lawsuit against Google for its use of the JVM, is > anyone else suddenly much more concerned about the states of Clojure > in Clojure and CLR compatibility? I know the former is an important > goal and also that the existence of the latter is due to heroic > volunteer efforts on behalf of a small number of people. Frankly I've > been sitting on the sidelines cheering the efforts on. > > But now I'm much more concerned about writing Clojure code that can > only run as Oracle sees fit. I've got a small bit of code which needs > OpenJDK on an Linux Amazon EC2 instance. What will the Oracle scry of > that? > > As the good book says: DON'T PANIC. IANAL, but I don't think this lawsuit has any bearing on Clojure at all. The crux of the lawsuit, as I understand it, is that Google is shipping a non-conforming Java platform with their Android- and since it's non-conforming, the guarantees Sun gave out (and Oracle is still bound by) about not requiring patent licenses for conforming platforms don't apply, so Google needs a license. What I expect to happen is a couple of months of legal maneuvering, followed by Google cutting Oracle a check with a fair number of zeros, and the whole thing going away. Worse case, the Android handset makes all have to cut checks as well. But note- what Google did that opened itself up for this lawsuit was shipping a non-conforming Java implementation. Clojure isn't shipping a Java implementation at all, conforming or not, so the whole issue is moot. Note that the CLR has all the same patent problems as the JVM- just substitute "Microsoft" for "Oracle". So switching to the CLR doesn't help (to the extent that there is a problem at all). Patents are a problem for software developers, in that you never know what patents you might be violating or who might sue you. But again, this has nothing to do with what language you implement things in. So relax. Breathe deep, pop some popcorn, and settle in to your comfy chair to watch the legal donnybrook. Brian -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
