On Mar 27, 2:01 am, Michael Neale <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think it is a deliberately controversial and cheap headline that
> stephen used to grab attention to an issue.

I originally was giong to use "Java 7 is dead" but chose not to. I
think my final choice has had the desired impact of getting people to
debate whether they care if Java SE should be an open standard.


> The JCP is a dinosaur of a process, lots of people aren't really happy
> with the rate of progress. It reeks of democracy - fine for
> governments, but design by the masses for a platform?? come on, not
> everyones vote really counts the same (nor should it)... (I have no
> idea how it compares to python PEP - would be interested for some
> comments though by those that know it).

I don't think many would describe the JCP as especially democratic!
Each JSR is decided on in the end by the spec lead alone and the spec
lead has all the power (they also get granted all the IP including
copyrights and patents). The expert group has the official role of
just guiding the spec lead. The finished spec is then voted on by the
16 member executive committee of the great and the good. The IP is
only made available once an implementation fully implements the
specification and passes the testing kit - see
http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/a_question_of_ip.

Incidentally, Sun has a veto on certain aspects of this process,
especially around the Java ME, SE and EE specs.


> I think if the TCK is opened up sufficiently then it would be less
> controversial what is happening ?

There is no requirement here for an open source TCK, thats a "nice to
have".

This is really about two things:

(1) Open standards. Does the Java community care sufficiently to place
pressure on Sun to keep Java SE as an open standard?

(2) Abiding by prior agreements. Is the Java community willing to hold
Sun to account for having broken prior public statements and legal
agreements?

Final point: Here is the text from the Java SE 6 specification, one of
those in dispute:

"2006.10.24 - 7. Nothing in the licensing terms will prevent open
source projects from creating and distributing their own compatible
open source implementations of Java SE 6, using standard open source
licenses. (Yes, you can create your own open source implementation of
Java SE 6 if you really want to. But we're also doing everything we
can to make it easy for you to use the original RI sources! See
http://jdk6.dev.java.net.) "
http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=270

As a community, are we willing to hold Sun to account for breaking
this extremely explicit statement?

Stephen
ASF member, speaking personally, neither a committer to Harmony nor
OpenJDK

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The 
Java Posse" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Reply via email to