OpenJDK governing board, constitution

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Geir,

On Sat, 2009-01-17 at 09:53 -0500, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
> What do you think we've been fighting for at the ASF for the last 8  
> years, and specifically, the last 2 for the JCK?

I appreciate you trying to fight. And trying to change things from
within the JCP. Which is indeed brave. You share that optimism with
Dalibor who also always urges to not burn down that which produces bad
results and be positive that change can happen. I might have become to
cynical with the results not being free, open and community friendly
over that many years, that I focus my efforts there where I can actually
produce free code in the open. You risk legitimating an institution
which doesn't guarantee software freedom without achieving any of your
goals. And alienating the community that you say you are fighting for
because you hide any talks and results behind the shadowy-cabal that you
have become part of.

> > If through OpenJDK we can improve the process of producing
> > specs, the reference implementation and free test suites, then I am  
> > all for it.
>
> You might argue that it's better, because you can get the TCK for use  
> in OpenJDK and derivatives

It is better because it is under terms that allow publishing any code
that is tested and/or passes with it under a free software license that
guarantees that the source, and not unimportantly, all patent claims
must be shared under reciprocal terms, without any restrictions on use
for any purpose by any user.

That said the current terms are certainly not good enough. Having the
TCK as proprietary software is bad, having people cut of from the rest
of the community through NDAs is anti-social and not giving anybody the
change to test any implementation as you wish is just very unfair and
unproductive.

> Another view is that they masterfully split the free/libre/open java  
> community, exploiting long-standing license fault-lines, in order to  
> counteract the threat that Harmony represented - a quality, performant  
> open source implementation with an *open, free community* under a  
> permissive license.

We started Harmony to unite the various free java efforts that we were
working on in the hope we could also work closer with the Apache
community. That it then turned out to split the community with an
apache-only effort was never what I, and other founders, like Dalibor
and Tom, intended it to be. I am glad Sun talked to the libre-java
community before starting their own effort and kept us in the loop about
their plans and desires to work together. I am not saying the
cooperation is perfect, there is a lot to improve. But we keep talking
and trying to work together. Our renewed Fosdem talks cooperation is
very indicative of that effort, and I am happy that everybody will take
the time again to come and exchange views.

> But it didn't work out, mainly because you never could consider  
> yourself producing software under the AL because of your views towards  
> "software hoarding"

No, creating an alternative code base incompatible with almost all the
existing efforts and not considering working together on a shared common
interface to all the components that 30 existing runtimes, class
libraries, jits, compilers, etc. already were using and working on
together was what made the harmony effort fail. I might not like
"software hoarding", and I certainly prefer using copyleft licenses that
are fairly reciprocal, but being expressly incompatible was what I
objected to. Any license that would be compatible with what the exiting
communities were using would have been OK. Luckily then the FSF did
solve a lot of those issue though by finally upgrading the GPL and
making compatibility an explicit goal. Please do reread "Toward a Free
Java" http://lwn.net/Articles/184967/ if you don't get what the history
is here.

> And if you're not providing code, you're providing "air- 
> cover" by letting them point to openjdk as a model open free software  
> community.

It is an open free software community, even though some derivatives are
not fully free software. Something I greatly regret. And you will always
see me being very critical of that and help out any alternative effort
to work around that. And that works. There has never been any attempt to
stifle anybody or any group creating any derivative of the code, whether
it be IcedTea as shipped most GNU/Linux distros now, nor any of the
other hybrid implementations
http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/06/openjdk-hybrids

> So whatever problems you see has historical actually exists, and is  
> still very real and harmful for another group of people with the same
> interests and aspirations as you, who managed to actually bring an  
> independent implementation together to the point of being ready for  
> compatibility testing.

Sure, I know. We had this back in 2005 already:
http://advogato.org/person/robilad/diary/64.html
And even though Dalibor and Onno pushed for it, we never succeeded back
then with 1.5. Keeping chasing after these old issues instead of
focusing on the future seems not very productive though. There are
indeed still serious issues with non-open specs and anti-social TCK
usage restrictions for 1.6 (I would say the processes around them are
not really workable right now). But we do have free implementations now.

Instead, lets work together on fixing these issues going forward for
1.7, and make sure that we will not just have free code as reference
implementation, but also with a fully free community process we all seem
to want. Either through the JCP if you feel that can still be saved, or
by going around it if it ends up not being able to produce results that
are free for all.

Cheers,

Mark