alt Hacker NewsI know Java has a complicated history of ownership, but I'm not sure I understand why Oracle is able to block contributions to OpenJDK. I thought the point of OpenJDK was to be separate from Oracle. I'm not a Java developer, just curious how this works.
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OpenJDK is the "default" implementation of Java and it's maintained by Oracle. Beyond that, there exists at least OpenJ9, which is a completely independent implementation, maintained by Eclipse Foundation.
This is very common in all open source projects, not just Java/Oracle.
Where does oracle block contributions?
This was more of an unfortunate lack of attention/prioritization.
Don't assume malice where a simpler explanation exists.
Corporations love open source when it delivers working code to their doorstep. They hate open source when it comes to actually maintaining and managing a community of developers who really do care about and use the core product.
So they create draconian "agreements" and "codes" to tilt the playing field entirely in their favor. It's entirely antithetical to the whole idea of open source.
These projects should be ruthlessly forked and all corporate development efforts ignored.
It's still their project and the Oracle Contributor Agreement means they get to asset joint ownership of your contributions.
That's broadly the point of CLAs, but for a beefy project like OpenJDK with so much shared code baked deep into enterprise deployment, Oracle will feel it's critical they can pull freely given code into the depths of their closed Java builds.
It's their project. It does absolutely block contributions (employers are unhappy sacrificing their engineering output to Oracle). If you don't like it, fork it.