Difficulties To Obtain A TCK License From Sun
See also: Technology Compatibility KitOn April 10, 2007, the Apache Software Foundation sent an open letter to Sun Microsystems CEO, Jonathan Schwartz regarding their inability to acquire an acceptable license for the Java SE 5 Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK), a test kit needed by the project to demonstrate compatibility with the Java SE 5 specification, as needed by the Sun specification license for Java SE 5. What makes the license unacceptable for ASF is the fact that it imposes rights restrictions through limits on the "field of use" available to users of Harmony, not compliant with the Java Community Process rules.
Sun answered on a company blog that it intended to create an open source implementation of the Java platform under GPL, including the TCK, but that their current priority was to make the Java Platform accessible to the GNU/Linux community under GPL as quickly as possible.
This answer triggered some reactions, either criticizing Sun for not responding "in a sufficiently open manner" to an open letter, or rather Apache Software Foundation; some think that ASF acted unwisely to aggressively demand something they could have obtained with more diplomacy from Sun, especially considering the timescale of the opening class library.
Since Sun's release of OpenJDK, Sun has released a specific license to allow to run the TCK in the OpenJDK context for any GPL implementation deriving substantially from OpenJDK.
On December 9, 2010, the Apache Software Foundation resigned from the Java Community Process Executive Committee, in protest over the difficulty in obtaining a license acceptable to Apache for use with the Harmony project.
Read more about this topic: Apache Harmony, History
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