Is GCJ/Classpath headed for patent trouble?

Thu Jun 17 04:21:00 GMT 2004

John Gabriele wrote:
> Do GCJ & Classpath actually meet all of these requirements? These seem 
> pretty
> stiff for GNU projects... If GCJ & Classpath don't meet these req's, 
> isn't the FSF
> just waiting for the unpleasant day Sun decides to enforce the above 
> conditions?

But, what could they do? :) Maybe the FSF or some directly related 
companies (Redhat?) could be potential targets for lawsuits... but the 
code is out there, people all over the world have copies of it and 
contribute... theres nothing Sun could really do to stop it now. And 
they wouldn't make much from a profit standpoint trying to sue a bunch 
of free software devs.
Even if there was some way to stop the project, someone will simply 
create another repository, maybe under a different name. Look what 
happened to Freecraft, after Blizzard went after them, they just renamed 
and kept going, just as strong if not stronger because of all the 
attention from the whole fiasco.
The best effort they could make is to try and guide gcj in the right 
direction (release algorithms, specs, docs, etc.) to help keep the 
platform from fragmentation. In my opinion GCJ altogether is a huge 
asset to the Java platform... I hope they see this too.
Just my 2 cents.
- Sal