Making good on its promise to walk away from the Java Executive Committee following disagreements with Oracle, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has just announced its resignation from the Java Community Process (JCP) “effective immediately.” In a statement on its blog, the ASF writes that “As such, the ASF is removing all official representatives from any and all JSRs. In addition, we will refuse any renewal of our JCP membership and, of course, our EC position.”
The conflict follows the recent JCP vote on the roadmap for Java SE 7, in which the ASF, along with Google and EC member Tim Peieris voted against its ratification. The new Java Specification Requests were passed, however, by a vote of 12-3.
At issue is Oracle’s refusal to provide the technology compatibility kits under the suitable license for its Harmony implementation of Java, something that the Apache Software Foundation says is necessary in order to certify Java as an open language.
In today’s statement, the ASF accuses Oracle of failing to “uphold their responsibilities” as it provided the Java Executive Committee with licenses “that are self-contradictory, severely restrict distribution of independent implementations of the spec, and most importantly, prohibit the distribution of independent open source implementations of the spec. Oracle has refused to answer any reasonable and responsible questions from the EC regarding these problems.”
For its part, Oracle has said that its priority is to “move Java forward.” Whether or not the Apache Software Foundation’s decision today will have an impact on that remains to be seen.
