Here's the news I couldn't find earlier - Sun is providing safe harbor for people nervouse about the GPL opening things up too much. Not surprising:

However, Sun is employing the so-called "classpath exception," a license addition that allows the company to place limits on the software that the GPL covers, Green said.

The effect is that programmers who create applications using Sun's open-source versions of Java can use choose a different license for their applications, he said.

"In the case of Java SE (Java Standard Edition), we're enhancing (the GPL) with the classpath exception," Green said. "So when you're working on top or shipping applications with the (Java) libraries and virtual machine, you're not affected by the Java license."

In addition, Java creator Sun will continue to offer a commercial license, a "dual-license" structure that gives other software vendors legal indemnification and official standards certification.

So it looks like commercial users who don't trust GPL don't have to deal with it. That raises another question though - for vendors who don't care, will this eat into Sun's licensing revenue? That will be interesting to watch.

Technorati Tags: OSS, GPL