OpenJDK governing board, constitution

[Mark Wielaard]

On Mon, 2009-01-19 at 05:47 -0500, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
> Who are the committers - who should be the decision makers in the  
> OPenJDK community?

http://db.openjdk.java.net/people

> How many don't work for Sun?  (And of those, how many didn't work for  
> sun in the past?)

About 15 I would say. And those that did work for Sun in the past are
actually those that push the community the hardest and tell Sun exactly
what is wrong if they see it. Look at all Martin's poking, helping and
sponsorship of other peoples contributions.

> >>> 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.
> 
> Have you read it?  There's no "any code".  It allows you to test Sun's  
> code.

It allows testing and redistributing code derived from Sun's code, but
you are free to combine it with any other code, given that the results
are distributed under in a repricical way under the GPL so as to give
anybody access to the code. Cacao and Jalimo which both use OpenJDK
hybrids both got one. But the TCK is still proprietary and under NDA
making it mostly useless for those working openly in the community.

> And no, it's the GPL v2, which has no clear patent language.

It has clear patent language (clause 7), it is even in the preemble of
the GPL explaining that is the intend is: "we have made it clear that
any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use" Which means the GPL
acts like a patent shield for all that distribute code under it. But it
doesn't have a clear patent retaliation clause, which is important to
combat patent trolls, and why we should upgrade to GPLv3 over time.

And of course there are other patent troll protections in place when
combining with anything GCJ/GNU Classpath related, like those provided
by the OIN foundation.

> People wanted to do something  
> that was different from what you were doing, and that was bad?

No, people abused the existing community in the name of "Harmony", but
instead of creating Harmony tried to do a hostile takeover of that
community and letting those who did aspire to create true harmony spin
their wheels trying to derail any cooperation.

> IIRC, the Harmony community quickly passed the Classpath community in  
> terms of completeness.

You seem to recall incorrectly. Though there is some nice code in
harmony now, it still isn't as deep and broad as what GNU Classpath &
friends are providing right now.

> > 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.
> 
> That's not what you said then.  You were very clear about not wanting  
> to contribute software that could be used by "software hoarders".

Again, your memory seems to be faulty. It was the resistance to work
together on technical terms with the rest of the libre-java community
that I objected to and that finally let to most of the Harmony founders
that already had harmony with the various other libre-java efforts
leaving. As said before:

> > Please do reread "Toward a Free
> > Java" http://lwn.net/Articles/184967/ if you don't get what the  
> > history is here.

Cheers,

Mark