Sun has nothing to say

Is this any way to build a community?

Not only does Sun refuse to talk about the license for the Java Compatibility Kit for Java SE 5 and Java EE 6, but it won’t comment on what companies like IBM and Intel wrote in their votes on the Java EE 6 proposal (JSR 316).

Sun refuses to disclose the license, and won’t even tell us why, or engage in any conversation about it whatsoever. It won’t tell us if it derives a competitive advantage from the license terms that imposes on its partners (we can assume that it does). Those terms lock out groups like Apache Harmony from using the Java SE 5 JCK, and thereby certifying their implementations of the spec, due to “field of use restrictions” that the JCK license would impose on anyone who uses Harmony.

Intel claims that a Sun representative promised that Sun won’t impose “field of use restrictions” on Java EE 6. Sun will neither confirm nor deny this, or make any public statement on the subject whatsoever, even though this is a huge issue for the Java industry.

It’s ironic that Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz is a genuine believer in fair disclosure. Schwartz is going farther than any public company CEO, as far as I know, in using the Internet to disseminate financial results, for example. Schwartz, in his blog, raves about the value of openness, of community, and of the media. His company, however, discounts the value of openness, of community, and of the media. I wonder if his employees read his blog.