Apache strikes back in Oracle Java standoff Positions are hardening between Oracle or Apache in a battle over licenses and the future of Java. On Monday, Oracle called on the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to “reconsider” its call for fellow Java Community Process (JCP) members to vote against Oracle's roadmap for Java with Standard Edition (SE) 7 – outlined in …
Oracne and "open" don't go together. They won't grant Harmony a licence and, if they don't, whether Apache stays as a member won't mean much because the community that gave birth to java in teh first place, don't like "oracle open" (ie. "closed") so I don't believe that it will be long before another, "Java" is born and in a few years this whole argument will be just another example of how corporations who seek to monopolise their controle on technology, was rendered completely irrelevant.
This kind of junk has been playing out ever since IBM tried to monopolise the PC technology market ... and look what happened in that field. They never learn.
4... 3... 2... 1...
Everybody sees it coming, and guess which implementation will prevail... the Oracle "closed" one, or the open one everybody has unrestricted access to.
Java in my opinion should be like C or C++ before, just a language plus a compiler, and everybody should be able to implement their version conforming to a more or less stable standard.
You want to implement it in a VM fashion? fine, you want straight machine code, fine then, you want to create a mobile phone implementation ala Android? fine too.
What to do with a language should just be a technical decision based on technical merits only.
When stupid non-sense licensing restrictions apply instead of technical merit, we get "JavaME". A product everybody runs away 20 years later because it is R-U-B-B-I-S-H.
Java is already all the things you mentioned. Nothing stopping you from rolling you own JVM, running Java natively, or what ever else. The issue Apache has is that they are not allowed to use the TCK to officially sanction there VM as Java.
Also, there have been a few open source JVM in the wild for a while. but they never caught on for a very good reason. When it comes to support, developers target the official JVM. There is no practical reason to target a non-sanction VM unless ofcouse you coding to Andrioid.
Also, JavaME runs on more handsets than any other VM. As a matter of fact, Blackberries API is based on J2ME so I can where you say its rubbish?
Oracle should remove those stupid field of use restrictions and give TCK licenses freely.
If Apache leaves the JCP, they may also stop all Java development and look for an other platform for their projects.
That would effectively kill Java.
Every open-source friendly library and application project would stop development on Java and start looking for an other platform.
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