Oracle and Open Source. NOT GOOD.
If you have been following the java news lately there is one theme that keeps coming back. It seems Oracle has declared open season on Open Source java and is trying to bully its way.
There have been a few incidents of late. First there has been the Open Office/Libre Office fiasco, where Open Office was essentially forked by its own community. Then there was the Java/JCP tantrum thrown by Apache, where Apache noisily left the JCP over spats with OSS licenses for the JVM (Harmony). And lately there are more, notably one with NetBeans. But one that is closer to home (and my wallet) involves a project led by an employee of Cloudbees.
Basically, if I understand the situation correctly the lead developer was a Sun employee when he started Hudson. So Oracle claims they own IP and brand, which very frankly is completely irrelevant since the license is OSS and the guys at Cloudbees can continue their work un-encumbered. And there is one thing left to do, which is basically to fork the project. And so it is... a lot of the OSS community is flipping the bird to Oracle.
But this outburst of belligerence is a sign of a deeper malaise within Oracle/SUN. I have had my own issues with SUN back in the days, when they wouldn't allow us to get certified. But by and large the attitude from SUN was one of "laissez faire". SOMEONE at Oracle has woken up and declared that all java assets were to be monetized and therefore there seems to be crackdown going on in the java open source community.
There is also a large dose of ignorance of how "things work" on the part of Oracle in how it approaches these problems. At the end of the day, an OSS project is lead by a few individuals that truly drive the community. If Oracle feels it "owns" certain projects but the work is done outside the company, then Oracle doesn't own shit. Point in case when it gets down to it in Hudson, it seems to me that Kohsuke Kawaguchi, also known as KK, and his friends do all the work, while Oracle just waves their arms wildly. A community without its community of developers is an empty vessel, and Oracle is about to learn this lesson.
It saddens me in a way, I was hoping Oracle would continue the benevolent dictatorship style of SUN when it came to things java. It seems bent on dictatorship alone. I doubt few will follow.
In a way, I can understand where they are coming from, after all Java is in maintenance mode and it is therefore time to derive maintenance revenue. The execution however seems tone-deaf and frankly clumsy. I am glad I am not the one having to be the corporate pitbull.
FORK YOU ORACLE.
Comments
But seriously, "not monetizing"? Oh, so Oracle is pissing off their java.net communities FOR NOTHING? FOR EGO? It wouldn't be the first time I see this in OSS but in the case of a corporate entity, that's just fucking dumb.
I must also say that in this case, i kind of understand their position. SUN has invested a lot of money in java and I would be pissed off as well seeing the Android's of the world doing a cosmetic fork of java (libraries) and reaping all the rewards without paying anything back.
Every java.net community is different in so many ways, and I don't see how Oracle has upset openjdk community members (sticking to that example since the other one seems to strike a nerve). By committing resources to the project? Bringing in IBM and Apple?
Other projects weren't as lucky and got their share of awkwardnesses (like painful infrastructure changes) and maybe even some ego-driven decisions. Hard to dispute that.
Different projects, different experiences.
So what are your thoughts on this:
http://blogs.tedneward.com/CommentView,guid,cb561282-8bf8-4a69-aa24-69870b790a65.aspx
Was the JBoss team wrong to defend the Hibernate trademark? Would your answer change if Gavin had gone to a startup after the Red Hat acquisition?
This is, again, a key for me to analyse this situation. Oracle is saying "our copyright, our code" which is FINE, and probably TRUE (if one can enforce the unfair IP clauses in the SUN employment contracts, which is debatable) but they clearly are saying "OUR COMMUNITY" which doesn't mean anything. If your community is walking out of the door then your brand and copyright are worth absolutely nothing, imho.
It is a good question about "Gavin" leaving Red Hat. And I can't really comment since it didn't happen. but If he had, then the question would be "what happens to the community". Clearly brand and copyright would remain with RH but the community may not.
Which is kind of my point in a way, RedHat did NOT alienate the developer and community it was taking over. And had a thousand more rights to than ORACLE just providing servers to the efforts...
Like I said I would hate to be the one having to run around bashing heads...
A pet peeve I have (not of your post, but generally) is that I have run across threads that boiled the Hudson conversation down to one sound bite -- "oracle is evil for not ceeding all rights to to hudson".
I actually think that's wrong - there's lots of other valid debate points, but at the end of the day I have to believe it's a rational business decision that any other organization would do.
Which brings me back to ego, whomever is enforcing this on Oracle's side should be fired. It doesn't make any sense.
2/ For that to happen they would have to first establish that it is in fact their property. From what I gather it is based on the fact that KK was an employee of SUN when he did this. The employment contract of SUN was a running joke in terms of enforcement. The "we own ALL YOUR THOUGHTS AND EVERYTHING YOU DO OUTSIDE THE COMPANY" approach is heavy handed and probably has no ground.
3/ Assuming 2 and 1 hold, then I would still argue that it is a completely braindead approach to the problem.
4/ No it is NOT like someone trying to relicense your work under a different license. (Which I had to fight) for the simple reason that the work was actually done by KK, and the community managed by KK. This is simply a case of Oracle waking and claiming it is all their property now that KK has made a success. So it is more akin to Oracle TRYING TO RELICENSE THIS FROM GPL TO THEIR LICENSES than the other way around. If you do not grasp that point, then clearly ... you do not gras that point :)
What I don't like is all the patent mojoschmojo. Its that back door to fuck open source. I wonder if it is possible to fork OpenJDK, upgrade it to GPL 3.0 (which I believe the license allows) and protect yourself from patents at the same time?
"If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation."