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Eventually, the courts will get to decide how “open” an open-source project is when one company gets to call all the important shots. This is why I don't see a

by kls 16y ago

Eventually, the courts will get to decide how “open” an open-source project is when one company gets to call all the important shots. This is why I don't see a fork sustainable. Hostilities have already been mounted. I think Oracle taints the entire concept of using the JVM for anything as far as Apache is concerned. The only think I see now is the transition to separate and a completely independent technology. I wonder how difficult it would be to port the language and classes over to the LLVM, if their would even be legal ramifications in doing that and in the end if it is worth it, given that languages have progressed beyond Java now. Still maybe Apache would get something together that would allow it's libraries to operate on the LLVM while embracing a new language for future development. It's food for thought given that their is an imminent need to move beyond Oracle's reach.

regularfry 16y ago
> The only think I see now is the transition to separate and a completely independent technology. GCJ would be what you're looking for here, I think. The critical question would be how badly, if at all, GCJ would be affected by an Oracle militantly pursuing perceived patent violators. > languages have progressed beyond Java now It's not about the language. It's about the collosal amount of libraries in the ecosystem.
- kls 16y ago
  I think and I could be totally wrong on this one, but I think that Oracle could construe the GCJ as appropriating their ideas and infringing on their patents. Moving to something like the LLVM would at least help distance Apache from that. My point as far as languages go was not that the libraries are not worth it but if you have to go so far as moving all of them over too a wholly separate run-time, is it even worth it to continue Java the language or would it be better to just adopt Scala or some other language that incorporates modern features and make it compatible with the ported library set. I was really pondering if you go all that way, is it worth it to just go that last 1/10 of a mile, instead of trying to bring Java the language into the modern age.
po 16y ago
I wonder how difficult it would be to port the language and classes over to the LLVM, if their would even be legal ramifications in doing that and in the end if it is worth it, given that languages have progressed beyond Java now. Isn't that basically what Google did with Android/Dalvik and are now being sued by Oracle for?
- kls 16y ago
  To be honest I don't know the details, but I though I remember hearing that it was more a case of doing the same thing as Microsoft, releasing a wholly incompatible product with Java at large, even the standard libraries where rendered incompatible. I don't know but I would imaging that you are completely within your right to make Java source code you write, compatible or incompatible with what you see fit. I am not 100% sure of the case, but it seems like that was what the articles where saying when the Google suit was hot in the news. I will go back and see if I can find info on it. EDIT: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Aug-13.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Aug-13.html This would explain why Google went through the trouble of making the Dalvik virtual machine explicitly incompatible with the existing Java virtual machine instructions. yes it seems that the VM that Google used is as Microsoft's was incompatible with vanilla JVM instructions.

by kls 16y ago

regularfry 16y ago

> The only think I see now is the transition to separate and a completely independent technology. GCJ would be what you're looking for here, I think. The critical question would be how badly, if at all, GCJ would be affected by an Oracle militantly pursuing perceived patent violators. > languages have progressed beyond Java now It's not about the language. It's about the collosal amount of libraries in the ecosystem.

kls 16y ago
I think and I could be totally wrong on this one, but I think that Oracle could construe the GCJ as appropriating their ideas and infringing on their patents. Moving to something like the LLVM would at least help distance Apache from that. My point as far as languages go was not that the libraries are not worth it but if you have to go so far as moving all of them over too a wholly separate run-time, is it even worth it to continue Java the language or would it be better to just adopt Scala or some other language that incorporates modern features and make it compatible with the ported library set. I was really pondering if you go all that way, is it worth it to just go that last 1/10 of a mile, instead of trying to bring Java the language into the modern age.

po 16y ago

I wonder how difficult it would be to port the language and classes over to the LLVM, if their would even be legal ramifications in doing that and in the end if it is worth it, given that languages have progressed beyond Java now. Isn't that basically what Google did with Android/Dalvik and are now being sued by Oracle for?

kls 16y ago
To be honest I don't know the details, but I though I remember hearing that it was more a case of doing the same thing as Microsoft, releasing a wholly incompatible product with Java at large, even the standard libraries where rendered incompatible. I don't know but I would imaging that you are completely within your right to make Java source code you write, compatible or incompatible with what you see fit. I am not 100% sure of the case, but it seems like that was what the articles where saying when the Google suit was hot in the news. I will go back and see if I can find info on it. EDIT: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Aug-13.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Aug-13.html This would explain why Google went through the trouble of making the Dalvik virtual machine explicitly incompatible with the existing Java virtual machine instructions. yes it seems that the VM that Google used is as Microsoft's was incompatible with vanilla JVM instructions.