Joseph Ottinger is back for another round.
When Apple announced their discontinued support for the Java platform on the Mac, Joseph prognosticated that in fact, this negative could turn into a positive if a big, powerful player in the Java market stood up to the plate and offered to step in and pick up where Apple left off. Well, sure enough, Oracle has done that. But is that enough? And what else needs to be done to restore confidence in Oracle with regards to their stewardship of Java.
And why do we care about Apache Harmony and their field of use restriction? From Oracle's (and previously Sun's) I never understood why they restricted Harmony. It is and was DOA and would never be able to compete with Open JDK. Especially now that IBM has come on board to OpenJDK, who cares? Just grant them their license and move on. They are insignificant and ignorable in the grand scheme of things.
Personally, I think it was a horrible idea to hold up Java 7 so long because of this particular issue even though my company supported the non-Sun JCP EC members on this. I hope that we see a Java 7 and 8 regardless very soon whether or not Oracle has to ignore the JCP EC.
>> They are insignificant and ignorable in the grand scheme of things.
What? Harmony insignificant ? Harmony is a giant, as Android is poised to become the number 1 operating system in smartphones and possibly on PCs, televisions, home appliances, etc in future.
Seems to me the Google and Harmony are so related it's appropriate to combine the two issues.
Harmony came about to have an open alternative Java product. This drives innovation and competition. However, since then Java has been open sources (granted with some restrictions), but you could now very easily innovation in the openJDK space instead of Harmony space.
If Apache/Harmony received the TCK, and it passed, then Harmony = Java (TM) compliant implementation and gains IP compliance as well.
If Harmony = Java, then it seems that Android could be considered a Java based phone. Google wins. Oracle wins (more "Java (TM) PR).
However that said, the TCK Oracle(Sun) agreed to was for a non-profit organization. Which would be fine for Apache, but if someone else uses it (Android phone manufacturers) in a for profit case, it's not Apache's problem it's the manufactures problem.
Why not have Google (or more specifically the Open Handset group) negotiate and agreement to swap patents. Surely Google has some search patents that Oracle would like to leverage in one of the server based products.
Maybe Google (OHA) could use the Embedded Java SE product that Oracle maintains as an alternative to Harmony.
Maybe Harmony could be considered Java ME.next.
And what else needs to be done to restore confidence in Oracle with regards to their stewardship of Java.
The answer is simple, and it's the same as it has always been. The answer is "time". We can only watch and wait and see, and perhaps make another judgement in a year or so. They can say whatever they want, but it's what they do that matters. And we can't tell what they do (or don't) until time has passed.
So I would suggest against the hand wringing and bed wetting and simply "wait and see". I don't see dramatic change in the Java world in the near term, and probably not in the long term, as major seismic disruption in the Java community is not in Oracles interest.
