[self-interest] Re: Patents?

[Jonas Bosson]

Michael Latta wrote:
> It was under an MIT license before.  The issue is that just releasing 
> the source does not mean the concepts or approaches used in the source 
> can be used in other code bases.  What I would realy like to know is 
> what Sun patents if any apply to the technology (polymorphic in-line 
> caches etc.)

That would probably be hard even for Sun to find out. Releasing it under 
GPLv3 gives you protection from the Sun patents to an extent that makes 
it hard to argue otherwise in court. I guess there is sufficient 
documentation about in-line compiling with references that you could use 
to enlighten a future court about. That is, how the modifications you 
have made where covered in the first publication with GPLv3 promise not 
to assert those patents against you.

Software patents are a mess.

> On May 1, 2007, at 1:15 AM, psiscapelabs wrote:
> 
>> Sun Microsystems has released the Self source code and binaries
>> complete with the source code to the VM under GPL V3.
>> hope this helps

Great! Many thanks!

/jonas