Building hsdis?

[Andrew Haley]

On 23/12/17 17:02, Volker Simonis wrote:
> Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com> schrieb am Sa. 23. Dez. 2017 um 12:25:
> 
>> On 20/12/17 09:54, Volker Simonis wrote:
>>> Yes, that's exactly the issue. And it was communicated to the OpenJDK
>>> Governing Board more than two and a half years ago (see my mail
>>> "Providing 'hsdis' binaries not possible because of GPLv2/GPLv3
>>> license clash" from May 2015 [1]) and since then reiterated several
>>> times. I'll plan to raise this issue again at the public GB meeting at
>>> FOSDEM in February next year - however with very little hope that it
>>> will be resolved :(
>>
>> How can the GB resolve it?  I can't think of anything we can do.
> 
> The GB obviously can not solve it directly in the same way it can not solve
> the (still existing) inability to push HotSpot changes or to finally create
> a Vulnerability Group.
> 
> But it can acknowledge the problem and try to put some pressure on Oracle
> in order to work on and resolve the problem with a higher priority.

Such as what, exactly?  Please propose something.

> If a part of the OpenJDK is practically unusable because of licensing
> issues I consider this inherently unhealthy. From my understanding it is
> the GB which is responsible to “oversees the structure, operation, and
> overall health of the OpenJDK”. Who else if not the GB should be qualified
> to work on resolving it?
> 
> [1] http://openjdk.java.net/groups/gb/

The GB can only solve problems which, in principle, can be solved.  I
know of no reasonable way to solve this one.  There are some extreme
solutions, such as re-licensing all of HotSpot, but that seems
disproportionate.

-- 
Andrew Haley
Java Platform Lead Engineer
Red Hat UK Ltd. <https://www.redhat.com>
EAC8 43EB D3EF DB98 CC77 2FAD A5CD 6035 332F A671