Oracle Java submission hastens Apache showdown

Two weeks and counting

Oracle is not altering course on its Java roadmap, hastening a final showdown with open sourcers at Apache.

On Tuesday, the database giant submitted four Java Specification Requests (JSRs) for Java Standard Edition 7 and 8 for approval to the Executive Committee of Java's governing body, Java Community Process (JCP).

The JSRs are for "small enhancements" to Java and Lambda Expressions, and there are two JSRs for SE 7 and 8 that contain sub-lists of potential JSRs.

This is the roadmap Oracle outlined at its annual conference in September and that it has told JCPers it will deliver, no matter what.

An EC ballot is next with results expected in the next two weeks. The specs' submission was announced here by the chief architect of Oracle's Java platform group Mark Reinhold.

Prussian general and military strategist Karl von Clausewitz said that war is the continuation of policy by other means. In the world of Java, it's JSRs.

Oracle's submission of the JSRs means that the clock is now ticking on its standoff with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). ASF last week urged fellow JCPers to vote against Java 7 and Java 8 unless Oracle lives up to its obligations and grants Apache's Project Harmony a license to use the TCK.

Apache has also said it will quit the JCP if Harmony is not granted a license — ASF has been a JCP member since 2000, and it's also home to some of the web's most popular open source Java projects.

Harmony is Apache's implementation of Java SE, which Oracle has refused point-blank to grant a license. Google's Android uses a virtual machine built on a subset of Harmony, and Oracle is suing Google for claimed violations of its Java patents in Android. ®