"Can a corporation take a piece of Open Source software, acquire all IP
rights to it, then close source its future versions? Is this a risk of
relying on Open Source software?"
I must say this is _not_ a surprise to me. Heck, guys, I'm pretty
incompetent in laws, I'm a poor engineer, so I want to make it clear so
I'm not playing the big expert. Perhaps the fact that is not a surprise
to me comes from my ignorance. But my knowledge on the topic, derived by
multiple discussions in years also with people who should know, says
that the IP owner can do whatever he wants on _future_ versions of
software (it might be not so easy to clear up all the IP ownership
stuff, especially on such a large project as Java, with tons of
contributors, corporate acquisitions, etc, ... but this is a detail). To
me the safety clause of FLOSS is that they can't revoke the stuff that
has been already published and can't prevent people from forking. So
Richard described the thing pretty well IMHO.
Of course, fork is not practically possible in some cases. Summing up, a
FLOSS project is risky when forking is not feasible. "Feasible" this is
to be interpreted as a matter of costs. In context, I agree that
currently forking Java is unfeasible. It would cost a lot and would not
balance the current status, where I think people live pretty good with
Oracle ownership. If Oracle goes the "evil" road, I think more than one
company would agree to spend big money on a fork, and the fork would
become feasible.
Just my 2 cents.
--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/people
[email protected]
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