While this is not meant to be legal advice... The purpose of the
Classpath exception to GPL v2 [1], both for the JDK itself and for
JavaFX, is to allow applications to use it without requiring that the
application itself be licensed under GPL nor requiring that the source
for the application be provided. This applies whether you use OpenJDK 11
+ OpenJFX 11 or Oracle JDK 11 + OpenJFX 11.
-- Kevin
[1] http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html
On 9/19/2018 12:22 AM, Sverre Moe wrote:
Great work with JavaFX 11. Looking forward to trying it out.
About license for OpenJDK and OpenJFX:
Given that OpenJDK has a GPLv2-CE license, is it possible to use it
with a commercial application, when bundling with a native runtime, or
do we need a commercial license from Oracle? We will not be providing
the source code for our application which is required when using
software with GPL.
We deliver both software and hardware to our customers. The server
hardware running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, which provides the
OpenJDK builds, comes preinstalled with our applications. SLES 15.0
has the OpenJDK 10 build, but I reckon later SP will probably provide
OpenJDK 11. We pay for SLES and are getting LTSS updates from SUSE
which includes the OpenJDK.
Given that Oracle JDK which we have used up to now to build our
application cannot any longer be used in production without license
from Oracle, we then would either need a license or use the OpenJDK to
build and deliver with out application. Using the OpenJDK I am not
sure we can because of the GPLv2 license it is under.
I guess it would not be an issue if we did not bundle the JRE runtime,
but required the client computer to have it installed, like we do
today when using Java Web Start. However with the removal of Java Web
Start we are looking into creating native packages for Linux, Windows
and Mac.
When it comes to third party Java libraries we have been carefully to
only use those which is possible in a commercial application, like
Apache, BSD and LGPL, such as JFXtras (BSD License 2.0), Medusa
(Apache License v2.0) and JFreechart-FX (LGPL 2.1).
Now that we will provide JavaFX in the same way as a OpenJFX
dependency I have the same concern with it as I do with OpenJDK if it
also is under GPLv2.
/Sverre
