Apache Declares War On Oracle Over Java 428
jfruhlinger writes "The Apache Software Foundation, feeling increasingly marginalized as Oracle asserts its control over the Java platform, is fighting back, trying to rally fellow members of the Java Community Process to block the next version of the language if Oracle doesn't make it available under an open license amenable to Apache. Last month's Oracle-IBM pact was a blow against the ASF, which had worked with IBM in the past, but it appears that Apache isn't giving up the fight."
Re:Oracle is Evil, C# Java (Score:1, Insightful)
C# is tied to a single OS. That makes it a nonstarter right there.
Mono is not a portable version, it is like its namesake a disease. Meant to poison the well that is Free Software.
Time for... (Score:4, Insightful)
Geronimooooooo!
Nokia went for Python (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oracle is Evil, C# Java (Score:2, Insightful)
Which part do you disagree with?
Re:Oracle is Evil, C# Java (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a little dramatic, isn't it? Mono is the open source implementation of .NET, which is a very solid framework I might add, though clearly MS did wield it to further Windows (I don't deny that). Mono is released under GPL, LGPL, and MIT licenses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software) [wikipedia.org].
I mean, facts are facts, so why do you have to be so dramatic about it? Or I mean.. did it.. where did Mono touch you? You can tell me.
Re:Oracle is Evil, C# Java (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a trap (Score:5, Insightful)
Mono is a trap, and solely exists at Microsoft's pleasure. Once MS decides the want to kill it, out go the patent infringement lawsuits and anyone using Mono is on shaky ground unless they donate to Microsoft's coffers.
The fact that it hasn't happened yet is no insurance. Copyright/left is one thing, patents are another and I don't trust Microsoft.
Re:Oracle is Evil, C# Java (Score:5, Insightful)
The license is not the issue, the patents are the issue.
If it gains traction rest assured MS will come seeking rent like they trying to do with android now.
Re:Oracle is Evil, C# Java (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oracle is Evil, C# Java (Score:2, Insightful)
"it is like its namesake a disease. Meant to poison the well that is Free Software."
Re:It's a trap (Score:4, Insightful)
It's released under LGPL, GPL, and MIT licenses... how would Microsoft ever "kill" it? They may decide to no longer officially support it, certainly, and they could stop contributing future changes to the open source implementation... but serious question:
Once it's been released under GPL, how exactly could they sue someone for using it, or forking it and continuing to work on a parallel implementation? That seems like it wouldn't stand up for a single moment in a court.
Re:Java is the new COBOL (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Java is the new COBOL (Score:5, Insightful)
At one time, COBOL was the only way to develop on tens of thousands of computers. Very expensive computers with very expensive maintenance and licensing contracts. There was a lot of money in this, measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year per site. That's probably an order of magnitude or two lower than the money at stake in the mobile software universe, but it's also probably a larger percentage of the overall market at the time.
There is a common but entirely mistaken belief that the great issues and controversies of this time are unique, unprecedented, and never-before seen. But license and market-control conflict is ancient in this industry. Almost every hassle you may see today has been seen by some earlier generation of dinosaurs.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
(But who would hold slots #2-10?)
Re:The Oracle at Delphi, Indigenous Tribes, Coffee (Score:3, Insightful)
Except the arrows are now much bigger and go "boom!".
Change this to an inflammatory title (Score:5, Insightful)
If you wanted to make this headline more sensational, you could change it to "Apache says GPLv2 license not good enough." which is what OpenJDK7 [java.net] is licensed under.
Yeah, Apache may be at war with Oracle now, but this has the potential for much more widespread damage. It also puts the Free Software Foundation in an... interesting position, as this technically is the first salvo from Apache in a license war between GPL and Apache License.
Re:It's a trap (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you.
Re:Reminds me of some bad history (Score:5, Insightful)
Oracle wants to reduce the competition and to "leverage" IBM's expertise. Once that expertise has fixed the issues with OpenJDK and Harmony has died, IBM becomes disposable to Oracle.
IBM is most unlikely to stop all work on Harmony, they're just not going to distribute it. Oracle's implementation of Java will suffer performance and reliability problems. IBM already has its own compiler (Jikes) and IBM already has a Java distribution. Once IBM has the certification toolkit, it can internally continue to develop Harmony and upgrade Jikes to v7 Java. Remember, this is just a repeat of IBM's experience with Microsoft regarding OS/2 - only Oracle hasn't the muscle of Microsoft. Once IBM is satisfied, they dump Oracle, release their Java as standard on all IBM hardware and, because they have better ties with Linux than Oracle, on many Linux distros, and they'll likely be able to convince the courts that they don't infringe on any patents because they are officially licensed to be able to use whatever the technology is.
Again, though, IBM won't want too much competition in the Open Source community. They can't rob Oracle of power over Java if they aren't the de-facto controllers of Java. For now, they'll be best of enemies. Going back to the OS/2 fiasco, they learned the hard way that in such partnerships the first one to dump the other will be the winner. The partner left in the dirt WILL be trampled over, no matter how much better their product might be technically. And IBM will want to be the winner in this. Mind you, so will Oracle. Oracle will also be familiar with this process and will want to pull a Microsoft, killing IBM's Java work, forcing IBM to either sacrifice all they've spent or to sell it to Oracle at bargain-basement prices.
Dramatic fits the context of this article (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people never thought Java would become a hot potato to be careful with. No one thought that Oracle would be going after people over patents. Sun put Java under the GPL2.
Can you tell me how Mono is more safe being under the GPL/LGPL/MIT when it is using tech directly from a company that is in many ways a direct competitor and has outwardly stated it thinks of open source as "communism"? Microsoft does have patents on specific things used in Mono. Mono is also under the GPL2. Coincidence? I think not.
It's called a can of worms. It's just we have a lot of slashdotters who refuse to believe it now for whatever reason.
OpenSolaris Board commits seppuku redux (Score:5, Insightful)
Apache to Oracle: Do what we say or we'll resign!
Oracle to Apache: Sayanora
I don't know that they should stay, but if they want to have any influence working with Oracle, aligned along Oracle's self interest is the only way to have impact.
Declaring "war" and making threats is highly unlikely to cause any useful change in Oracle's direction.
Surely the OpenSolaris experience illustrates just how Oracle behaves w.r.t. threats.
Re:Oracle is Evil, C# Java (Score:2, Insightful)
Getters are good because they abstract the data model away from the object interface. It doesn't matter where the data comes from or how it's stored because access is always through a method (if needed).
What's stupid about Java is that it doesn't hide the getters and setters behind properties. Just like the data model should be irrelevant, so should the fact that you may be calling a method to get a value.
Object Pascal (and perhaps C#) does it right. The getter may be a private data field or it may be a method. It's unimportant to the user of the object.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
>I have plenty of alternatives.
Ok. I have a mature product, which is a custom manufacturing ERP system. I am quite proud of it, it represents the peak of my career. It has been built in J2EE, and has some components deployed in JBoss, and some in regular Tomcat instances. A small ($50 million/year) company runs its factory on this system, which is responsible for supply chain, procurement, inventory control, and cost accounting. The system is dependent on more than a handful of items from the Apache toolchain.
In my shoes, would you be able to explain to my boss, how "plenty of alternatives" fit into this scenario?
Re:It's a trap (Score:4, Insightful)
You are having trouble because you are confusing copyright law with patent law. That is a common mistake caused by all those attorneys who refer to both as "intellectual Property". To break it down to you, copyright != patent. Patent rights can be asserted any time by the patent holder regardless of their involvement with others. A patent holder can grant or withdraw licenses to use the patented technology at their whim. Currently, Microsoft only has a promise not to sue those developers that they can withdraw at any time.
The "patent pledge" Microsoft made with the mono developers can evaporate in the wink of an eye and then the whole project, and anyone using it, are at risk of patent infringement. The only reason they made that pledge is because of the multiple suits both here in the US and in Europe regarding interoperability. Once the scrutiny dies down, they can revoke that promise. And don't think they won't if it means they can make easy profits on threatening patent suits (which they can).
Worse, if Microsoft were to sell that patent to some other troll out there, nothing is binding that troll to the promise Microsoft made.
In short, you need to look up "torpedo patent".
Re:It's a trap (Score:3, Insightful)
Novell didn't license Mono specifically. They licensed the entire broad patent portfolio of Microsoft.
Given that Microsoft allowed the Mono team to license the Mono code under GPLv3 (given the patent clauses contained therein) and didn't enforce their patents when Ubuntu shipped Mono packages, Microsoft really won't have a case in court.
Stop spreading FUD.
Re:Oracle is Evil, C# Java (Score:1, Insightful)
And if you believe the statement is actually legally binding (did you ask a lawyer? Thought not), and if you believe there are no loopholes in it, then you are what we call a "convenient idiot". Don't be offended, it's a technical term. Look it up.
Google thought Java had a legally binding statement that said anyone who used it was not liable under Sun patents. Look where that got them.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:4, Insightful)
They sent a recruiting email to myself and some of my friends -- some of the top students at the top CS school in the country -- asking if we were interested in coming to work on the Solaris kernel full-time; they were pretty much collectively told, "After what you did to Sun? No way."
Unfortunately, I guess that your insightful feedback won't make it up the chain. All that Oracle HR will report is the number of new hires (and there will be some) that campaign made. They won't be top-class, on the whole (my opinon for the same reason you gave for flipping them the bird), and the Sun exodus will continue...
Please, if there's anybody out there who's considering sticking with Sun (ie the Sun products continued within Oracle) please speak up - I really need some pros to even make it worth while totting up the increasing number of cons.
Re:Change this to an inflammatory title (Score:4, Insightful)
Oracle (and Sun before them) said "if you build an implementation of Java that passes the JCK, you get a license to the Java patents". Then they said "we will license the JCK for testing on any implementation excpet for those that are designed for mobile devices"
Oracle of course wont give in to Apache on this.
Hell will freeze over before Larry will allow ANY implementation of anything that even vaguely resembles Java to run on anything vaguely reselmbling a mobile phone device unless the vendor shipping that implementation pays Oracle per-unit royalties for every device they ship.
Re:It's a trap (Score:5, Insightful)
How to break your legally binding promises -- the legal way:
1. Never outright license.
2. Only promise not to sue...
2.1. Over patents you control.
3. Sell patents to patent troll and/or puppet company.
3.1. Voilà you no longer control the patents
4. Set us up the patent bomb.
5. Profit
There not even a fucking mystery "????" here.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, if you don't have to write an interface at least twice in code, then twice in XML configuration files and once in a .INI style configuration file, along with another XML file to put it all together, how do you know it's J2EE?
Re:OpenSolaris Board commits seppuku redux (Score:3, Insightful)
Thing is, Java isn't just a language and a VM. It's also an ecosystem, and unlike that around .NET, it has historically being a much more open and diverse one. Case in point - the most popular Java build tool (Ant), Java ORM (Hibernate) and Java web framework (Spring MVC) are all third-party products. So Oracle has control over parts of that now, but by no means they control all of it (except in the "he who can destroy a thing, controls a thing" meaning of it).
Now, of all the players in this Java ecosystem, Apache has always been one of the major guys. Ant, Maven, Struts, Tapestry, Tomcat, Velocity... sure, it's all FOSS and others (like Oracle) can fork it, but do they have the resources to maintain all of it?
And if they let that ball drop, there goes a huge chunk of the ecosystem - and with it, a lot of what makes Java attractive today.
So, no. It's not nearly as one-sided as it seems. Of course, if Oracle just wants to kill Java as one of the most broadly used software platforms of all times, and make it into a .NET-like in the Oracle software stack with all tech coming from the house, then sure, they can do that. But I very much doubt they'd be able to monetize that efficiently. For those who don't mind that sort of thing, there is already .NET, and it has much more shiny in it than Java ever did.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:3, Insightful)
$4.99? If Oracle sold it, it wouldn't be a bottle, it would be a per-anus charge of $4,999 for each... "application".