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by TwoSheds 5713 days ago
AFAIK the code which makes the Swing UI use native OSX (Cocoa) instead of X is Apple proprietary. I wonder whether Apple will now give that to Oracle or release it as Open Source. Otherwise we're going to be stuck with X Server and ugly UIs for a long time :-(
1 comments
stellar678 5713 days ago
Two thoughts:

First, with some quick Googling/Wikipedia-ing it seems that Java is released under the GPL. Wouldn't the viral nature of GPL make this code from Apple open source?

Second, if Apple cared enough to invest in building the code to make Swing seem native-OSX in the first place, one would assume they care enough to ensure that it stays available ongoing. Otherwise Java applications begin to drag down the 'desirability' of the OSX platform.

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Zak 5713 days ago
Wouldn't the viral nature of GPL make this code from Apple open source?

No. Apple's Java was based on code licensed from Sun long before Java was released under the GPL. Additionally, Sun's release of code owned by Sun under the GPL does not preclude Sun from licensing that same code under other terms if it so chooses. That's the basis of the dual-license model used by other projects like MySQL.

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TwoSheds 5713 days ago
Good point. And I don't think classpath exception would apply here. I'd be interested to hear if someone has actually seen this source code "in the wild".
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