[brown9-2]

In the email from the Oracle VP, he pretty much invites the developer community to fork the project under a different name:

Because it is open source, we can't stop anybody from forking it. We do however own the trademark to the name so you cannot use the name outside of the core community. We acquired that as part of Sun.

The issue though is of course not that cut and dry. The community would want to think over and debate any such move as it would have a long-term impact on the overall working relationship with Oracle, Sonatype, other Hudson contributors/sponsors, etc...

[phaylon]

Invitations are usually welcoming. "We can't stop you" doesn't really strike me as such.

[bphogan]

I dunno, maybe I'm reading into this too much, but it almost sounds like a "hint" so as not to upset others at Oracle. Kinda like "I don't have that thing you're looking for, but if I did, it would be in my unlocked office in the third desk drawer on the left. I have to go to lunch now."

[phaylon]

I'm not sure I can see that, since the sentence following that quote is »We hope that everyone working on hudson today will do as they claim to want, and work with us to make hudson stronger.« This reads quite passive-aggressive to me, indicating that either you go the Oracle way, or you're clearly not really interested in bringing the project forward.

And even if the above were a subtle hint intended to be below the Oracle radar, it would be a suggestion or opinion of a single person, not an invitation.

[Lewisham]

I also read a bit of sarcastic "good luck making a Hudson without the name, we'll still have it". Presumably there would not be any Oracle changes that break plug-ins, so a lot of users would have to manually migrate to a fork. I'm guessing Oracle feels that puts them in a good position.