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LWUIT and the world

I decided to kick start this blog with the subject matter.

CANVAS development is considered difficult and costly. SUN tries hard to promote by distributing LWUIT ( stands for  Light Weight User Interface Toolkit) is a UI library that is bundled together with applications and helps content developers in creating compelling and consistent Java ME applications. LWUIT supports visual components and other UI goodies such as theming, transitions, animation and more.
Quotting from the product’s page, “LWUIT is a UI library that is bundled together with applications and helps content developers in creating compelling and consistent Java ME applications. LWUIT supports visual components and other UI goodies such as theming, transitions, animation and more”.

Looking at the GPLv2 License reveals that any modification to the code must become a public, open source library. Get it? any modification you make to any part of this library must be open sourced.

Now, any firm that thinks about an “EXIT” will never even think about using LWUIT due to the question of IP ownership. Why should anyone invest money in an open sourced project?

Now, do SUN really try and promote LWUIT?

2 Responses to “LWUIT and the world”

  1. Yoad Gidron said:

    You can use LWUIT with commercial applications as long as you don’t change the library. Unless you have a specific reason to modify LWUIT, there is no IP issue with using it.

    July 29th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

  2. Raphael-Shay Menachem said:

    OK, That’s what SUN say about it. Now when you think about UI that’s really cool and capture people, you can’t settle for the regular UI included in the LWUIT. You will use it as base and modify it.
    Later on, try and explain the lawyer on your (almost) angle side that there are no IP issues and every single line of code in the product is yours…. ☺

    July 29th, 2009 at 2:22 pm

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