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OpenJDK is real deal. It doesn't track "Oracle Java", it is other way around. You can get TCK under acceptable terms, Red Hat got it for IcedTea. You only can't release you source of your implementation under other license than OpenJDK (GPLv2) but that is fine for anybody except Apache. That was same with Sun, they also didn't want Java under BSD license (or ASL) and Oracle didn't change anything. They just sued Google, which Sun also wanted to do. If Java was really not free, and if patent grant in GPLv2 really don't work, why then Oracle doesn't sue Red Hat over IcedTea? Jboss is killing WebLogic. It is laughable to say that Microsoft giving estoppel support to Mono by not yet killing it, while Oracle actually distributing OpenJDK under GPL is not enough support for you. Java is not a problem at all, just don't use stuff like Harmony or Dalvik. Also, Apache license don't really have strong patent grant (or at least not stronger than GPLv2). It doesn't apply to future patents, and it doesn't apply to things that are developed by some other contributor that is not patent holder. What MS is doing is not opensourcing, they just dump code under ASL. That means their continued development is closed, and they file for patent affter they dumped the code. Any feature they add to their proprietary version might also be patented. So when someone else reimplement that feature and adds it to free version, Microsoft can still sue them. But if you patent something and release it under ASL, you give patent grant to proprietary forks too. So there is nothing stopping anyone for taking it proprietary, extending it, and then patenting extensions to exclude you. GPL patent grant only applies to derivative works which obviously must be GPL too. So it is more fair. Problem with Apache is that they don't want GPL, but that is only ancient GPL vs BSD debate. OpenJDK is free as it gets, and .NET specification is solely controlled by Microsoft (and they only put some parts in ECMA but only "as is" with no other parties having a say), while Java at least have some kind of pretence of standard body, JCP. Java is lot better choice than .NET and Mono. That said, I reduced the usage of Java (long before Oracle-Google case) and do mostly things like Ruby on Rails and pure C. |