Releasing code containing Java Swing, what license?

Question

I'm getting to close to project completion, and I would like to make my code open source, releasing it under GPLv2 or Apache, something of that ilk. However, I had read somewhere that there is no free implementation of Java Swing, and so code depending on swing couldn't be released under those licenses. Is this true? And if so, what licenses should I be looking at instead?

Answer 1

What kind of "free" are you really looking for? You can release your code under either the GPL or Apache licences with no problems. It's fine to release GPL code which depends on non-free code - otherwise there could never be any GPL Windows software, for example.

Note that the JDK is open source these days too, with a license based on GPL and variants.

Answer 2

Are you actually using/modifying the Swing source code or just releasing code that uses Swing?

If the latter, you don't need to worry about it and can release under whatever open source license you like.

If the former, you can base your work off the OpenJDK Swing source code which is GPL2. Hence you would be able to redistribute happily as GPL2.

Answer 3

AFAIK Swing is part of every JDK/JRE distribution, why do you need to redistribute it with your application?

Aside from that, I'm not aware of any restriction for applications using Swing. In fact, there are quite a few open-source tools based on it.

Answer 4

You can use whatever license you want with your Swing application. Open source licenses are however quite confusing. Here is a nice comparison chart that might help you decide what license best suits you: