> I must say this is _not_ a surprise to me. Heck, guys, I'm pretty > incompetent in laws, I'm a poor engineer, so I want to make it clear so > I'm not playing the big expert. Perhaps the fact that is not a surprise > to me comes from my ignorance. But my knowledge on the topic, derived by > multiple discussions in years also with people who should know, says > that the IP owner can do whatever he wants on _future_ versions of > software (it might be not so easy to clear up all the IP ownership > stuff, especially on such a large project as Java, with tons of > contributors, corporate acquisitions, etc, ... but this is a detail). To > me the safety clause of FLOSS is that they can't revoke the stuff that > has been already published and can't prevent people from forking. So > Richard described the thing pretty well IMHO. > > Of course, fork is not practically possible in some cases. Summing up, a > FLOSS project is risky when forking is not feasible. "Feasible" this is > to be interpreted as a matter of costs. In context, I agree that > currently forking Java is unfeasible. It would cost a lot and would not > balance the current status, where I think people live pretty good with > Oracle ownership. If Oracle goes the "evil" road, I think more than one > company would agree to spend big money on a fork, and the fork would > become feasible.
Interestingly, while we talk about a fork on Java, the Mono guys are forking the Mono stuff developed under Novell's IP. While not as massive as Java, still quite an undertaking scheduled to take 3-4 months. -- 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.
