When the Sun goes down - what happens to the OpenJDK?

[Mark Wielaard]

On Tue, 2009-04-21 at 09:11 -0400, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
> On Apr 21, 2009, at 8:59 AM, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> > On Tue, 2009-04-21 at 08:10 -0400, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm not sure what you mean.   The JSPA grants Sun an effective veto
> >> regarding "platform JSRs" (EE, SE, ME), but they have no special
> >> rights wrt the platform TCKs.  The platform TCKs are just TCKs, and
> >> the licensing of them must conform to the JSPA.  (see "fight, Apache
> >> and Sun, Java SE TCK" for more information :)
> >
> > It probably depends on how you interpret JSPA 5.F.IV. which seems to
> > explicitly exclude Sun from all such legal obligations except for
> > offering a TCK separately (but under its own terms) from any RI.
>
> It's hard to imagine that anyone involved with the exception of Sun's  
> lawyers thought it should allow Sun to do whatever it wants forever.

Which is why you should always read contracts before accepting and
signing them. And if clauses are unclear, or could be interpreted
literally to say something like the above, even if you personally
believe the other party is probably "well intended and doesn't really
mean it that way", to get a clarification beforehand, not at the last
moment when the relationship has already tuned sour.

That isn't to say that I think Sun acted in a sleazy way. After GNU
Classpath/gcj/kaffe & friends were never allowed to get the Java SE TCK,
even after applying for the scholarship more than 4 years ago now [1],
we formed Harmony. And I do very well remember the confidence we all had
that the Sun/Apache relationship would finally make all this JCP/TCK
nonsense easier to handle and that alternative free java implementations
would finally be granted free TCK access for the platform
implementations. And that we GNU/Apache/Sun and friends would all work
together in harmony. We all know how that turned out.

It was probably naive to think something would improve without drastic
reform of the way the JCP is setup. You acted very brave trying to do
that from the inside, but I think it is finally time to do it from the
outside and make the code leading, now that most of the java eco-system
has accepted Free Software as the base of the java platform. Lets run
with the code and just make it happen without these JCP dark room deals
between big (proprietary) corporate interests. Especially now that,
through OpenJDK we have the core platform reference implementation in
hand as Free Software.

> I'm a Mac OS X user that has an iPhone, remember? :)

Yes, you are probably used to accept one-sides, proprietary, unfair
agreements then :)

Cheers,

Mark

[1] By our mutual friend Dalibor of course:
http://www.advogato.org/person/robilad/diary/64.html