What does this mean for OpenJDK? Will Google now be working on it and improving it?
From what I gathered in the previous discussion, it's not a drop-in replacement - they made several changes to OpenJDK already.
From what I gathered in the previous discussion, it's not a drop-in replacement - they made several changes to OpenJDK already.
And who actually guides the Java roadmap? The OpenJDK trademark grant (http://openjdk.java.net/legal/openjdk-trademark-notice.html) seems to spin on whether or not "the Software is a substantially complete implementation of the OpenJDK development kit or runtime environment source code retrieved from a single Website, and the vast majority of the Software code is identical to that upstream Original Software"?
What's to stop Oracle from deciding that future Java roadmaps are going to exclude Android-specific commits? Neither IBM nor Apple's interests seem particularly aligned with Google here (I'm assuming they throw some kind of weight in the OpenJDK politics).
Too bad the ATF and Attorney General Janet Reno didn't take charge of the situation.
I just love the absurdity of running a red light somewhere like California, Texas or Florida, then just going "F*&( it, TO CANADA!!!!!" <sound of engine revving up as driver floors it>
And you sure as hell don't get to $10 billion a year in profits by being stupid.
But ORCL has gone from being an innovator to a rentier, and they're not averse to using hardball tactics on top of their historical position to try and stay relevant. Not using that HCM suite? Okay, but before you jump to a competitor just know that we'll increase your licensing fees if you stop using any of our products. Oracle is losing ground when it comes to new clients, but they're great at extracting every last drop of revenue from their legacy client base.
Their contracting arm is most notorious for massive boondoggles (USAF's ECSS, scrapped after a billion dollars of sunk costs; Cover Oregon, which ended in recriminations, lawsuits and an FBI criminal investigation), and its software was at the epicenter of the HealthCare.gov catastrophe. Oracle could have owned cloud computing -- hell, they bought the company that reinvented the concept and instead tried to use it to force expensive hardware purchases on their expensive software customers. Now they're a minor player in a field that is steadily expanding to cover their core business sector and they're milking their cash cows furiously in an attempt to extract maximum value from a dying field.
In other words, they're Blockbuster the year after Netflix debuted streaming; their model is faltering and they don't know how to replace it and still stay in business.
No, they're not evil, just a nasty piece of work to do business with, and they're not stupid, but they're slowly dying. I only wish they weren't taking the last remains of Sun with them.
https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m1s
And later on he warns:
"Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison!" -Bryan M. Cantrill
Or at least being a little bit open and transparent enough to build good will, anyway. There's a lot of non-open, non-transparent, non-friendly things about Windows 10.
No, this shows you can be a dick and promise to stop and everything will be forgiven.
Everything I can read also makes it seem like the patent grants (above the GPL) are all tied to the condition of generating a compatible implementation of Java.
If Google wants to fork OpenJDK at some point down the road, they'd better have faith in the GPL.
That seems to answer that question, I think?