Oracle and IBM carve up open-source Java leadership

IBM and Oracle have divvied up the leadership of OpenJDK – the leading open-source Java project – finally giving IBM the sort of Java control it spent ten years fighting Sun Microsystems for. The new bylaws for the OpenJDK community outline a governing board that consists of a chairman, vice chairman, OpenJDK lead, and two …

[Franklin 0]

Forks for everyone!

I'm sure glad Oracle is steering. It would really suck if a drunken rapist drove the bus into a fiery pit of death.

[stupormundi]

Need larry with horns now

Cowardly IBM traitors!!1! But they know they'll be first up against the wall when the revolution comes. I guess it's back to Commodore BASIC now :(

[Anonymous Coward]

keep your friends close...

... but keep your enemies closer. The EU would never have the brains to allow IBM to buy SAP, and they all know it. Mostly people buy IBM software to cut their Oracle software costs. Without a SAP in their pocket, that is a game of customer lock-in that IBM cannot possibly win in the long run.

[The Dodoman]

Hmmm... Where will this lead us to?

Hate to say it, but at this point it looks like MS and its .NET are in the most stable relationship with their crowd.

[Ubuntu Is a Better Slide Rule]

The Slow, Ugly Hunk Named Java

See for yourself:

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/java.php

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=java&lang2=gnat

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=java&lang2=ats

ATS could quite well replace Java, as it is also a safe programming language.

[Ru]

RE: ATS could quite well replace Java

Hurgh, I've just read up on ATS.

It really, really, really won't be replacing java, and to think otherwise suggests that you've spent a little too much time locked away in an ivory tower somewhere.

Hint: Java's speed, or lack thereof, is not its primary failing.

[Destroy All Monsters]

"Java" will now be relabeled "Belarus"

But we can live with that, can't we?

Oh I think, there's an armed taxman at the door....

[Brian 39]

Time to move on....

I hear the gong sounding the kiss of software death by clogged up arteries.

Nothing ever going to happen here ... Time to move on and find another cross platform language.

[Robert Carnegie]

I thought that "OpenJDK" was

. . . the "Java belongs to Sun^WOracle and what we say goes" version of "open" Java.

I suppose it isn't quite right or reasonable to compare it to the Vichy government of France, but I'm not sure what else to suggest... maybe the UK "Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs" whose independence from the government that they supposedly advise was famously ripped up with the sacking of the highly respected Professor David Nutt. Don't feel too bad for him, he wasn't getting paid for it anyway, and it was almost the greatest compliment they could pay him - other than an actual compliment, I suppose.

Anyway, I suppose we can expect Java and cannabis users now to be treated equally, i.e. viciously beaten when our pusher puts up the price and we can't pay. Perhaps there is something wrong with the metaphor, there, but then my employer runs a database using a Java desktop application communicating with Microsoft SQL Server, and there was something wrong with building a business on Java working with a Microsoft database product when Java was owned by Sun. Now that Java is owned by a major competing database product, it's even more wrong, isn't it?

[Kevin 11]

So what is safe moving forward?

At my company we use java heavily, and we're a bit worried about Oracle taking back so much control that Sun had relinquished. Are we looking at standard Oracle practice, increasing (or introducing in this case) licensing fees? What java is safe to standardize on moving forward? Should we stick with Oracle java, or start moving to openJDK? Our containers are tomcat or jboss (where EJB's are needed)

[Ubuntu Is a Better Slide Rule]

@So what is safe moving forward

Use anything non-Oracle and non-MS. Eg.

GNAT

ATS

FreePascal

[Wang N Staines]

Death to Java

Who owns that piece of crap that's Lotus Note?