In addition, Sun will release the source code under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
The GNU GPL undertakes to make sure that every user of the software has these four freedoms.
Software created under the GPL can be modified by developers, with any changes made freely available to the community.
The goal of releasing a program under the GNU GPL is to assure you the freedom to change the program.
"The GPL is intentionally viral, " says Levin, who ran worldwide corporate licensing for Microsoft before moving to Boston, where he started several software companies.
Even Red Hat relies on copyright law to help it enforce the GPL license, which prohibits third parties from incorporating open source code into proprietary products.
In a USENIX session on this subject, Apple's senior software engineer Fred Sanchez said that Apple was wary of software licensed under the popular GNU Public License (GPL), because of the restrictions placed on incorporating the code into commercial software.
The ambiguities of the GNU Public license are responsible in part for Apple's lack of interest in developing for the many Linux distributions that are licensed under GPL. By contrast, said Sanchez, BSD groups do not demand that users of FreeBSD or NetBSD code contribute their innovations to the community, and are therefore more friendly to corporations.
Because the code has been licensed under the Eclipse public license rather than the harder-core GPL, device manufacturers will be able to continue to tack on custom features and hardware support without open-sourcing it, which should make them less gun-shy about throwing weight behind the platform -- and considering how badly these guys need to get back into the spotlight, that's a good thing.
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