Mailing-List: contact harmony-dev-help@incubator.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
Received-SPF: neutral (hermes.apache.org: local policy)
Message-ID: <4293210C.8010600@apache.org>
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 08:41:48 -0400
From: Stefano Mazzocchi <stefano@apache.org>
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (Macintosh/20050317)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: Sun lashes out at open source J2SE
References: <19e0530f05051908145008c01b@mail.gmail.com>
	 <B2B179F8-3AF6-40A7-9199-522B3D466025@apache.org>
	 <m34qcxcv30.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
	 <138300903.1116824654602.JavaMail.root@set.superlinksoftware.com>
 <bc89fc250505231433bdccad5@mail.gmail.com> <42925066.7000309@gmail.com>
 <72401016-6561-42B6-87D8-F243BF877BC9@apache.org>
In-Reply-To: <72401016-6561-42B6-87D8-F243BF877BC9@apache.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
> Eh.
> 
> Lets just keep to our purpose and message of compatibility and 
> openness.  I'm familiar with getting misquoted, or pieces taken out  of
> context, and I hope this is the case here.

Yeah.

I understand where James Gosling is coming from: he is concerned about
'forking' and I understand that. But he has to undertand that forking
the codebase and forking the functionality are two different things. The
artistic license, for example, allows you to fork the code *ONLY* if you
change all the APIs issues. I think somebody has to go down to his
office and let him know at least that, I think he has a little
stereotypical view of open source and thinks that we are all tinfoil hats.

But you see why a lot of people got burned in talking to Sun: you can't
show them the value of a community if their top management thinks that
no real software architect would ever work with a bunch of slashdot freaks.

Pretty blind, actually. Especially because Apache created more code and
value for the Java platform than anybody else. Oh well.

He does not understand our "clear need" to have a truly open code,
because he does *NOT* understand that we don't want the right to fork
the java platform (we can't call it java if we do, so what's the
point!), but we want the right to build a community around it. Sun
licenses don't give us that, therefore the need for Harmony.

But at the end, who cares: the JCP license allows us to do it, and our
not-for-profit status allows us to have access to the TCK for free.

We will not need words to show James Gosling that, ultimately, Harmony
is not going to be disruptive, but rather beneficial. And the reason for
this is that we value compatibility even more than he does: because a
lot of our salaries depend on it!

Let's get to work.

-- 
Stefano.