[spokey]

> Also, there are major trademark, patent, and copyright issues that need to be settled before anybody can safely fork Java and stop adhering to the spec.

One would certainly have trademark issues with the name Java, but I'm not certain about the rest of that statement.

Sun/Oracle have already provided a GPL'ed version of the JDK and core libraries at http://openjdk.java.net/. There are/were independent attempts to do this also, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Virtual_Machine#Licensing and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines for example.

I think the only real issue is around the TCK, but that's just blessing an implementation as "Java Compatible(tm)", or at least I think so. Couldn't one take one of the existing JDK/JRE implementations, rebrand it IcedTea, and create their own IcedTea compatibility test?