Oracle refuses to talk about Free Java campaign | Hacker News Reader

Oracle refuses to talk about Free Java campaign

computerworlduk.com

12 pointsGarbage12 comments

I think the campaign is pointless. If you want to 'free Java', fork it. Then Oracle can choose to get on board or not.

They paid a lot of money to get Java under their wing and they aren't going to just give it away afterwards. Yes, they were for this in the past, but the obviously realized it wasn't going to happen (possibly because it won't work) and chose to buy it instead to further their goals.

Problem is, they still have the right patents and the right attitude to kill forks, and as other pointed out it is debatable if the patents grant applies to derivates of OpenJDK.

What the world needs to do is to start from scratch, with a new VM, new specs, a new base class library, plus a compiler that converts Java bytecode to this new VM ... something like .NET / Android, but more cross-platform and less tied to Java's standard library.

I strongly agree. There's a real opportunity here to create a truly open VM, one that is designed from the beginning to support functional languages. It would need a major corporate sponsor though, because building a new platform requires a very substantial investment. Microsoft... you listening?

Why not Parrot?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot_virtual_machine

IMHO it tries to do too much, and doesn't have enough resources.

A platform that resembles Java / .NET would also make porting of existing libraries easier.

I think the already glacial pace of Java evolution would not exactly improve if it were handled by an independent entity.

If you want a really free Java, Apache's Harmony is a great starting place. The very liberal license means you can use it for basically whatever you want, proprietary or open.

The patents pledge doesn't extend to Harmony since AFAIK it hasn't passed the TCK yet, and even if it did, supersets/subsets aren't allowed.

Oracle suing the Apache Foundation? That is even worse press than their suing Google.

They don't have to sue Apache, they just have to sue their users ... i.e. Android is using Harmony's class libraries, with Google being one of Harmony's customers.

So it is already happening.

Most of the suit seems to be about the virtual machine, rather than the class libraries, but to be honest, the whole thing is as clear as mud.

They are taking action to improve Java. There will be a Java release in 2011 and one in 2012. Half the people will disagree with the decision, of course.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com