Or.. why Harmony? Why not the IcedTea project? It'd be easier to fork via IcedTea because it's OpenJDK based - and by current rules OpenJDK based projects are allowed to get ahold of the TCK under certain terms.
The IcedTea project has been an OpenJDK almost-fork for its entire existence. They chose to work closely with the OpenJDK team as a positive move. However the name and project site has been there all along, in part (I think) as an ace in the hole that they could start a hostile fork project should Sun turn evil. Sun wasn't willing to turn evil but one could argue that Oracle has. The Open Office situation has strong parallels here. I no longer remember all the names - but in 2008 at FOSDEM, I met a thought leader in the outside-of-Sun OOo community who expressed to me some crispy betrayal feelings towards Sun. They'd set up a non-Sun project whose purpose was simplifying building OOo for Linux distros and they had several additions which Sun wasn't willing to accept. They purposely kept their own project identity and branding just in case Sun were to (as they expected would eventually happen) turn evil. Would it be a good idea to launch a hostile fork of Java ...? Well - It's questionable what a "fork of Java" would be since "Java" is not an open source project. OpenJDK and Harmony are open source projects, Java is not. Java is the trademark/name for a software platform specification. Both OpenJDK and Harmony attempt to implement that platform specification. Maybe I should be using my java.net blog for these postings rather than burying them in the Java Posse group... On Oct 5, 12:45 pm, Augusto Sellhorn <[email protected]> wrote: > Sounds like a really bad idea. > > Also, why this instead of supporting Harmony instead? > > On Oct 4, 3:01 pm, amiro <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Here's a link to an article by someone called Greg Luck. > > >http://www.dzone.com/links/is_it_time_to_fork_java.html > > > Greg proposes a Java fork which would maintain compatibility with > > existing Java6 code. > > > I am wondering if this is indeed a good time, and if it's even legally > > possible to fork it without licensing issues. > > > I am thinking of a few reasons for the fork: the disappointing > > progress with Java 7 (several features pushed back to Java 8, maybe > > java 9/10..), the general frustration with the JCP process, and the > > worrying dominance of the Java platform by a single organisation. > > > Do you think there is a valid case for a fork, is it even feasible, > > and could it gain traction within the community? > > > What would be the licensing obstacles? > > How could such a project be managed effectively? > > Is there anything which could be improved in terms of the JCP, and > > adding new features more quickly? > > > Here's an insteresting reaction post by someone called Sacha: > > >http://sacha.labourey.com/2010/10/04/time-to-fork-java-si-vis-pacem-p... > > > Personally, I like the idea of a few copyleft (GPL) forks starting up, > > with the *hope* that the strongest fork could become embraced in a > > nice fluffy, happy agreement. ;) > > > Any thoughts? -- 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.
