But that aside, I don’t think that the ASF has anything to gain by
going after OpenJDK, in particular. People will just see that as the
familiar BSD vs. GPL mudpit at best, and frame it as jealousy at worst.
On the contrary, it would be quite interesting, for example, if the ASF
went ahead, and asked to certify a Harmony/OpenJDK hybrid under GPLv2.
That would be creatively gaming the system and stretching the boundaries
of what’s possible in a “pragmatic” way. But due to the way the ASF
works, that’s not going to happen, and if an ASF director were to
propose such a thing, I’m sure some people would call for his head on a
pike.
ASF’s ability to explore such options is limited by the structure of its
membership, and the more or less exclusive focus on one license, and one
way of doing things. Classpath has a bit of an advantage there, since we
tried to spread out the diversity of ways of doing things, licenses and
communities as far as possible (more than two dozen different JVM
projects are using it, from proprietary ones to GPLd Kaffe, JamVM, gcj &
cacao), so we can play both the “pragmatic”, and “idealistic” roles,
regardless of the situation. With the ASF, as soon as the GPLv2 is
involved in any form, the option for the foundation to play the
pragmatic role is gone, due to its membership structure. And Sun surely
knows that.
That, again, is something I don’t see the ASF as being able to overcome,
without tearing itself apart between the anti-GPL “idealistic” fraction,
and the rest of it. So I understand why Geir has picked the strategy he
is using, his other option is to do nothing, and the majority of the
membership seems to be too frustrated with the situation for that to be
a viable option.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that the strategy of taking that particular
issue head on, now, with the ASF as the tool to do it, is working, and I
don’t think it can work, as Sun can simply choose to continue not to say
anything, denying the ASF a platform to base their public campaign on,
and wait it out, until they and IBM make whatever deal they need to make
to make it all work out.
And I’m pretty sure they won’t ask me or Davanum to hold the candle
while they make their deals. ;)
If you want the JCP to get out of that dark age of backroom deals, there
is only way: make them all play by the same rules, to open source
everything in a community maintained standard by default.