Oracle Asks Apache To Rethink Java Committee Exit 266
CWmike writes "Oracle has asked the Apache Software Foundation to reconsider its decision to quit the Java SE/EE Executive Committee, and is also acknowledging the ASF's importance to Java's future. In a message released late Thursday, an Oracle executive made conciliatory gestures to Apache. At least for now, the ASF doesn't seem eager to rejoin the committee. 'Give us a reason why the ASF should reconsider other than "please,"' ASF president Jim Jagielski said in a Twitter post on Thursday. The Java Community Process is 'dead,' Jagielski said in a blog post, also on Thursday. 'All that remains is a zombie, walking the streets of the Java ecosystem, looking for brains.'"
Re:They reconsidered (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think the GP's point is that there's something wrong with sailing. More that when most people "take time off," they do so to go bird watching, or to take the kids to Disneyland, or just to lie around on a beach getting tanned. Ellison "takes time off" to command the crew of a multimillion-dollar racing yacht that's the fastest in the world.
Re:They reconsidered (Score:2, Informative)
Earth, of course. On most wind angles, the sails provide propulsion by being airfoils, not things for the wind to push against. Further, when sailing nearly upwind, the speed of the wind across the sails is the wind speed plus most of the boat speed, so it's possible to get a very high speed of wind over airfoil.
It's complicated, and you don't need to understand the mechanics unless you like sailboats, but, yes, it is possible to move faster than the wind speed. If you have a chance, watch iceboat racing sometime. Same principle.
Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)
In the short term: not much will change. The JDK will continue to be available. The developers will keep working on Tomcat, Hibernate, Spring and so on.
In the medium term, things might get weird. Apache will release Harmony with or without Larry's blessing, the only question is how compatible it will be with Oracle Java. Larry might decide to start charging money for Java. Java will definitely be around, but it's hard to tell in what form.
In the long term, we all die.
Re:They reconsidered (Score:3, Informative)
Good question. Based on his statement, we're probably looking for a planet with two hemispheres, an axial tilt, and a period of ~365.25 days or so... Let me know if you come up with anything.
It's really, stupidly, simple... (Score:5, Informative)
Bruno Borges said it the most succinctly...
"There is no point helping to write specifications that you aren't allowed to implement"
http://twitter.com/#!/brunoborges/status/13058930657730560 [twitter.com]
And Brian McCallister explained the full ramifications most clearly...
http://skife.org/java/jcp/2010/12/07/the-tck-trap.html [skife.org]
I have to do this anonymously (Score:5, Informative)
I work with Oracle quite a bit and they're pretty bad.
I worked with Sun and their reps for 20 years. They were clueless in a good way. They were just regular guys who would try to help you. Yeah, the company was dysfunctional, but they actually wanted to please you. I could call them weekends and get quotes for stuff, they'd go out of their way to write special deals and do whatever it takes to get the business at a price you could afford.
Oracle, by contrast has a good cop/bad cop approach. Its a way to screw you and charge you extra, but the sales rep keeps his hands clean.
Here's how it works. You get an an account rep, who acts like a regular guy, except he's not. He'll do stuff like "give you a free guy to help you" whose job it is to count licenses, servers, and applications secretly while "helping" you. He then passes that info back to the "inside sales rep". The inside rep (who will be a mystery to you) will say stuff like "Hey, I heard you got a new bigger server with a lot of new processors, is that right?". If you say "yes", he's got you. If you say "no", he'll keep calling until you admit it.
Meanwhile as you're planning on going live, they know the dates, they call the CIO and say "Dude, you're out of compliance. You go live, you owe us another $1M->a zillion dollars". Meanwhile, their licenses is so opaque that you have no idea what you owe them, and they count different licenses different ways, and even if you're a lawyer and a DBMS expert, you can't tell if you're in compliance or not.
The only way to deal with them is refuse their help, whenever the account rep comes in, accuse him of treating him poorly and throw him out. And when the inside sales rep calls you have to say things like "New server? I have no idea. I know the CIO was talking about getting rid of Oracle or something, but I'm not sure. What did you say you do for Oracle again? New application...ha, they never tell me anything. Did you know we already have an account rep here?"
That completely screws with the inside sales rep. Then when the account rep comes calling, say things like "Hey, my budget has been cut 10%, I need you to figure out a way to cut my maintenance bill by 10% or the CIO wants to throw you guys out. I know its crazy, but he's really mad at you". Then you never hear from the account rep again.
I've said this about Oracle for years: Nothing good comes from dealing with them. The only reason, the ONLY reason they stay in businesses is because they have software OEMs who will only support either MS SQL Server or Oracle as their RDBMS. Anybody who willingly gets into bed with Oracle is a fool. If you do get into bed with them, wear a condom.
And I'm not making up a f*ck*ng thing about any of this.