http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1340-the-end-of-suns-bold-open-source-experiment.html Tech writing blog Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:04:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1340-the-end-of-suns-bold-open-source-experiment.html/comment-page-1#comment-128999 worriedsunboi Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:18:36 +0000 http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1340-the-end-of-suns-bold-open-source-experiment.html#comment-128999 What SUN *must* do is keep the Java brand safe from corporate control. That will decide a lot of things. Put that into the agreement or sink the whole community while you sell yourself. "Java" and "OpenJDK" need to stay"Java" and "OpenJDK", not "OpenOracleKit". What SUN *must* do is keep the Java brand safe from corporate control. That will decide a lot of things. Put that into the agreement or sink the whole community while you sell yourself.
“Java” and “OpenJDK” need to stay”Java” and “OpenJDK”, not “OpenOracleKit”.

]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1340-the-end-of-suns-bold-open-source-experiment.html/comment-page-1#comment-128864 Kristian Rink Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:40:48 +0000 http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1340-the-end-of-suns-bold-open-source-experiment.html#comment-128864 Yes, the industry has lost an open source giant. But, now, I think sooner or later we will have to see whether or not the children born out of this giant (projects like NetBeans, Glassfish, OpenSolaris, OpenDS, OpenESB, OpenOffice, to mention just a few) will be capable of surviving no matter what lays ahead. Now, for most (if not all) of these projects we will have to see whether or not there is a real community willing to fill the void that might be left if/when project funding by Sun^WOracle will be drastically cut down. From that point, the more I think of it, the more I come to the conclusion that, for the open source community, the best thing to happen would be small, active communities either migrating or forking any of the projects in question, starting with Java, to further on maintain them in a community / consortium / foundation like approach (ASF, ObjectWeb, ...). Most of these pieces of technology are way too valuable to be put at stake simply because of some company being acquired by some other. If, and, in my opinion, <strong>only</strong> if this point eventually could be reached, these projects could come to reliable life not depending upon the mercy of Oracle product policy. After all, the success of applications and tools like Tomcat or Eclipse has proven this generally is possible, and in the end and as an outcome of this, I expect people adhering to open source being even more cautious not just in software being "open source" but also project governance being done by some community not just a single business entity which, being acquired or closing down business or whatever, eventually could take down the whole project. Yes, the industry has lost an open source giant. But, now, I think sooner or later we will have to see whether or not the children born out of this giant (projects like NetBeans, Glassfish, OpenSolaris, OpenDS, OpenESB, OpenOffice, to mention just a few) will be capable of surviving no matter what lays ahead. Now, for most (if not all) of these projects we will have to see whether or not there is a real community willing to fill the void that might be left if/when project funding by Sun^WOracle will be drastically cut down. From that point, the more I think of it, the more I come to the conclusion that, for the open source community, the best thing to happen would be small, active communities either migrating or forking any of the projects in question, starting with Java, to further on maintain them in a community / consortium / foundation like approach (ASF, ObjectWeb, …). Most of these pieces of technology are way too valuable to be put at stake simply because of some company being acquired by some other. If, and, in my opinion, only if this point eventually could be reached, these projects could come to reliable life not depending upon the mercy of Oracle product policy. After all, the success of applications and tools like Tomcat or Eclipse has proven this generally is possible, and in the end and as an outcome of this, I expect people adhering to open source being even more cautious not just in software being “open source” but also project governance being done by some community not just a single business entity which, being acquired or closing down business or whatever, eventually could take down the whole project.

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