David Gerard wrote:
On 13 August 2010 22:05, Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
Oracle is only suing Google because Google is redistributing Java without paying them, and because they're using a modified version (so technically they're not covered by the patent grants), and because Google has deep pockets. It's pretty implausible that they'll sue users and developers directly. If they do, Wikimedia has little enough money to be extremely low on their list. I don't think we need to worry about this one way or the other at this point.
I wasn't aware of "if we can probably get away with it" in the WMF guidelines regarding free software.
But the first half of Aryeh's first sentence ("Oracle is only suing... not covered by the patent grants") stands alone. Unless we're afraid that Oracle is going to start going after anyone who uses Java in any way, we shouldn't have to worry. (We're not redistributing JDK's, let alone modifying them.)