What is Duke? No one knows his species or genus. People say he’s a Java Bean or a Software Agent, but all we know for sure is that he reminds us of the more than twenty-year legacy of the Java language and its community. The Java community has such an affinity for Duke that designers have created surfing Duke, astronaut Duke, rockstar Duke, macramé Duke, and of course Heroku’s Samurai Duke.
But how can all of these Duke variants exist without violating copyright or trademark laws? After all, Duke represents the language at the middle of one of the fiercest copyright battles in the history of software. The answer, it turns out, can teach us a great deal about how to nurture an open source...