

Oracle Asks Apache to Reconsider Java Committee Departure - hornokplease
http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=D0CBFE66-1A64-67EA-E4FB1D830180257C

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younata
Let's sum this up.

    
    
        Apache states that if java 7/8 has non-open licensing, they'll leave.
        Oracle votes for java 7/8 to have non-open licensing.

Apache leaves. Oracle looks Apache in the eye and asks "Are ethics and morals
really that important?"

Makes perfect sense to me why Apache left. I'd do the same in Apache's
position.

~~~
iwr
It's more a courtesy call so they don't look quite like saying "Good
riddance!"

~~~
sigzero
That is exactly it, I think.

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lukeschlather
It's frankly bizarre that Oracle would sue Google over Java licensing, and
then expect an organization with Google employees on the board and deeply
involved at many levels to gladly accept their stewardship of Java.

Oracle seems to think that everyone should commit code to independent Java
repositories, improving the Java ecosystem, and furthermore pay Oracle for the
privilege of improving Oracle's IP.

Oracle not only fails to grasp the point of open source, they have it
completely backwards.

~~~
rbanffy
Oracle's position is understandable. An Apache licensed Java runtime would
possibly deny them of a substantial amount of profits it currently derives
from J2ME licensing (it comes with _every_ phone).

Oracle is not as prone to underpants gnome-like business plans as Sun was.

Too bad their product line is the antonym of cool.

~~~
mbreese
Both positions are understandable. I'm just surprised that Oracle thought that
they could play both sides like this. Pre-Sun they were all "yeah, what ASF
said! Open licensing!". Post-Sun they take all of the historical Sun
positions.

Again, it's understandable, but why are they so surprised that the ASF would
respond like this? They are asking everyone to play a game using weighted
dice. If you don't like Oracle's rules, you can go home. So how can they be
surprised that ASF actually left?

~~~
bad_user

           it's understandable
    

No matter how awful a certain action gets by moral standards, everybody has
understandable motives or urges ... rape, murder, backstabbing allies, you
name it.

What isn't understandable is how companies can act hypocritical and get away
with it, when your friends wouldn't.

That's a huge and hurtful double standard, especially since in the US
companies have the same legal status as people, which is a huge advantage for
them.

Would you trust to do business with, or be friends with, or just tolerate a
person that acts like Oracle does?

~~~
shadowfox
> What isn't understandable is how companies can act hypocritical and get away
> with it, when your friends wouldn't.

Maybe because the company is not your friend? You are paying them money (in
general) for services and you are getting services. If they do 'bad things' to
you, you should consider switching to something more appropriate.

> especially since in the US companies have the same legal status as people,
> which is a huge advantage for them.

Corporations don't have same legal status as people (irrespective of the
meme). They probably have more rights than you want them to have, but that
doesn't make them a person

~~~
bad_user
> _If they do 'bad things' to you, you should consider switching to something
> more appropriate._

Well yeah, that's what I'm saying: there's some trust involved when dealing
with companies, like will Oracle pull the plug on the platforms I'm building
my business on? And it makes perfect sense to switch to something else in such
a case.

So when Oracle acts a certain way, then backs away when in control forgetting
their own complaints, how can you trust them after that?

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jfager
From the actual Oracle statement, and left out of the linked post:

 _Earlier this week, by an overwhelming majority, the Java Executive Committee
voted to move Java forward by formally initiating work on both Java SE 7 and
SE 8 based on their technical merits. Apache voted against initiating
technical committee work on both SE 7 and SE 8, effectively voting against
moving Java forward._

So overall, just an amazingly sincere request from Oracle, wholly indicative
of a good faith effort to work this out with Apache. [Edit: </sarcasm>]

[http://blogs.oracle.com/henrik/2010/12/oracle_response_to_ap...](http://blogs.oracle.com/henrik/2010/12/oracle_response_to_apache_departure_from_jcp.html)

~~~
brown9-2
Interesting that they don't mention Google's vote "no".

The official comments of each party in the JCP on this vote are pretty
interesting, even a large number of the "yes" votes clarify that they are
voting only on the technical merits and they have deep concerns with the
licensing.

<http://jcp.org/en/jsr/results?id=5111>

~~~
bruceboughton
The Credit Suisse comments are particularly interesting:

On 2010-12-06 Credit Suisse voted Yes with the following comment:

Credit Suisse's vote is purely on the technical content. We strongly demand
open standards and an active community around Java as we selected Java SE & EE
as primary pillars for our application development (as many others in the
industry do). The current battle around licensing term, however, reveals that
Java never actually was an open standard. FOU restrictions clearly
discriminate open source implementations and prevent competition, and with
that, innovation in that space. While Java had a considerable head start, it
lost a lot of momentum over the last years. Fragmentation (or a fork) of the
language and its platforms are clearly not desired. But today, customers are
already facing competing models for developing enterprise applications (e.g.,
Spring, OSGi, Java EE). The main problem, in our view, is the lack of
modularization, clear delineation of Java IPs owned by Oracle and truly open
standard extensions, and the ignorance of developments outside of the JCP
(even though OSGi has a JCP blessing). The OpenJDK framework is not sufficient
for all aspects of the language. Java must be kept interesting for researchers
and universities: researchers not only contribute to the standards (e.g., Doug
Lea for concurrency or Michael Ernst for type annotations) but also decide on
the languages (and paradigms) that are taught at universities -- and this in
the end determines the knowledge and mindset we acquire with our software
engineers. While we recognize Oracle’s intellectual properties around Java, we
strongly encourage Oracle to re-think its current position around licensing
terms. We strongly support open source as a licensing model for contributions
in the JCP.

~~~
rbanffy
Can anyone explain clearly why OpenJDK is not enough?

~~~
parfe
I was under the impression it was the TCK that caused the issues. OpenJDK
could be certified, but you weren't allowed to then run the "certified"
version on a mobile device.

Which is an additional restriction onto of the GPL.

~~~
rbanffy
Since Sun distributed OpenJDK under GPLv2, they waived that restriction.
GPL'ed software cannot have FOU restrictions. AFAIK, however, OpenJDK does not
include J2ME, so, you would be able to run, say, NetBeans on your phone, but
not Hexic.

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pohl
I can't wait to read the long list of what the ASF would like Oracle to
reconsider.

~~~
mdaniel
It may not be that long: "do what you contractually said you would and open
the TCK"

The rest, I have zero doubt, Apache can handle on their own.

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bradfordw
[unenthusiastically] Stop. Don't. Come back. -- Willy Wonka

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eneveu
Aside from leaving the JCP, is there anything _more_ Apache could do? As long
as Apache keeps contributing to the Java ecosystem through their various open
source projects, Oracle still wins.

As a Java developer, I really do not like what Oracle is doing, but I am not
really sure of the best course of action. Should I simply boycott Java and
start looking for another language? It's not that simple, for practical and
economical reasons. Plus, aside from Ruby, the languages I would be most
interested in run on the JVM (Scala, Clojure), and heavily depend on Java
libraries.

Let's say I keep using Java, and want to open source some Java code. Would it
be possible to use some sort of open source license that has an exception to
forbid its use by Oracle? Or would this defeat the purpose of Open Source?
What if I want to contribute, but do not want to help Oracle's business?

