Gating Issue
The Apache Software Foundation has received no official response from Sun regarding the open letter mentioned above, other than a polite acknowledgment of receipt. While we are disappointed by this lack of visible progress, we still hope that Sun will reconsider their position regarding this issue of fundamental importance to the Java ecosystem. We do believe that bringing awareness of the issue to the community has been beneficial. We understand that friends of the Foundation and others that feel strongly about these matters are talking to Sun directly on our behalf. Further, we have seen this issue become a gating issue with JCP Executive Committee members as the consider how they vote on JSR. For example, see Intel’s and Red Hat’s comments on the recent vote results for Java EE 6. Apache will continue to do what it can to escalate this issue with the JCP Executive Committee with the goal that Sun will finally grant the ASF a TCK license for Java SE that is free of any field of use limitations.
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The Apache Software Foundation has reconsidered its policy of allowing software used for general community work to be covered under an agreement such as the NDA. The general plan is to eliminate NDAs for project software in a way that minimizes the distruption to our communities. We will work with organizations such as the JCP and its spec leads to achieve an acceptable resolution. While a hard date has not be officially set, we’re looking for complete elimination of the NDA for project software by 2010. Discussion of this issue in the context of the JCP and the TCKs will take place on the jcp-open@apache.org list.