
Apache Foundation to vote down Java 7, protesting Oracle abuses  - abraham
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/11/apache-foundation-to-vote-down-java-7-protesting-oracle-abuses.ars?
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api
Java is a great platform for long-lasting robust apps. It is invaluable to
both the business and the scientific community, providing stable code
longevity and long term reusability beyond any other current platform. It
provides near-C++ performance too if you tweak your code a bit.

Yet here we are. Politics. Politics and business pissing contests. If they do
ruin or derail Java, can you imagine the amount of lost capital? The amount of
man-centuries of work that would at the very least now have to be _ported_?

Of course, I don't think that will happen. The momentum is too large. But it
could, and the fact that you have a bunch of salesman-type assholes
threatening to destroy billions (or more) in value in order to measure the
length of their dicks is sickening.

Politics is sort of like farting. Yes, everyone does it. Yes, it is normal.
But it smells, and the people who do it a lot are kind of gross.

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pquerna
I am trying to comprehend your comment.

It seems like you are calling the Apache Software Foundation "bunch of
salesman-type assholes threatening to destroy billions (or more) in value in
order to measure the length of their dicks is sickening.".

That kind of statement seems extremely delusional to the facts of how the ASF
has interacted with the Java ecosystem for the last decade.

The dispute is about a promise that Sun made -- and signed into with how the
JCP was setup -- that a specification for a Java API, and the Testing of that
API (TCK), are available open-enough to allow free and open source
implementations. The ASF joined the JCP because it believed Sun would live up
to this promise.

Oracle supported the ASF position, before it bought Sun, because it wanted an
more open Java language. But now that Oracle bought Sun, their position
switched, and they are actively working to prevent other implementations of
the Language from being created.

This is not about politics and farting, this is about a contract and a promise
that Sun made to the community.

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davidw
A more charitable interpretation of

> It seems like you are calling the Apache Software Foundation "bunch of
> salesman-type assholes threatening to destroy billions (or more) in value in
> order to measure the length of their dicks is sickening.".

might be that he's referring to Oracle. It's not very clear though.

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Lewisham
That was my reading.

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moron4hire
Oracle is succeeding in a few short months at a task that Microsoft (through
malice) and Sun (through incompetence) failed to perform in over 15 years: the
killing of the Java platform.

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vessenes
A question I have found myself asking recently is: "Why not a fork?" Can
someone explain to me why Apache shouldn't just rename Java to, say Jive
(okay, bad example) and proceed with putting out its own certification tests?

All Jive code could at the beginning run on JVM 6, and later the Jive VM would
be the place for new feature development.

Google would get behind this, I bet. Many developers could be induced to stick
with the free, Non-Oracle version of the world, especially this year.

So, what am I missing?

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riffraff
this is what google did with dalvik/android. They are being sued for that
basically. Working on openjdk gives you a patent grant, working on a fork
which is not java does not, apparently.

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gaius
As I understand it, that's not quite true: You write conforming Java code and
compile that to JVM bytecode. That bytecode is then translated into Dalvik VM
bytecode. Java (the language and the compiler) is still an integral part of
the toolchain, there's just no Java-the-VM on the target device.

Google could, perhaps should, have gone for a Go -> Dalvik compiler and
avoided all this.

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vessenes
Exactly. Google's run around also had to do specifically with Java Mobile
restrictions -- something Sun wanted Google to pay for.

The question Oracle's lawsuit raises is whether or not it's possible to
compile Java without infringing on their patents. I still think my question
has more merit than wmf suggests -- MS did essentially what I'm suggesting
with C#.

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riffraff
but the issue is not only about compiling is it? I recall that a few of the
patents (debatable as they are) specifically relate to runtime, such as the
one about the security manager. Such a patent would invalidate the whole
runtime code as it was built around such a policy.

So if you want to avoid being sued you need to use a different language, a
different compiler and a different runtime, which is what MS did with C#.

But then why would you need a patent-minefield such as Jive-the-forked-java in
the first place?

