Hudson Moves Away From Oracle

Posted by Alex Blewitt on Dec 01, 2010

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The open-source continuous build project Hudson is considering a rebranded fork as part of ongoing problems with the Oracle hardware suite at java.net.

Prior to the Oracle/Sun takeover, Sun managed all its code at java.net. However, this was prone to infrastructure problems, with the proposal being to move over to Kenai as a replacement. The takeover delayed this transition but it was always expected that this would occur.

So, as we all know, java.net is extremely unreliable, and that, as a result, causes a *lot* of problems for Hudson development and usage - when java.net's down, issues can't be filed or modified, users can't download Hudson, plugins can't be updated, etc... On top of that, the java.net issue system frankly sucks - it's just not usable, really.

At the time, the issue tracker was moved over to http://issues.hudson-ci.org/ whilst the source code remained behind. But it wasn't until the java.net infrastructure was locked, preventing any development or mailing list discussions, that the progress gathered pace. The mailing lists were moved to Google and a proposal was initiated to move code to GitHub, having been selected based on popularity and familiarity with Git as a DVCS.

A summary of the saga can be found at Who's driving this thing? but there has been some concern by Oracle with the recent pace of changes. He also reminded the group that Oracle holds the Hudson name, so if the project were to be forked, then it would have to change its name. The comments on the thread seem to be strongly in favour of moving to GitHub, which has already migrated code to GitHub under the HudsonLabs identity.

You need to fork. You (the Hudson developer community) do not own your own trademark. Today it's being used to make infrastructure decisions, tomorrow you won't be allowed to have a Hudson Barcamp because it competes with an Oracle conference, and you'll receive a legal letter when you create that cool t-shirt.

The citing of a larger community is extremely patronizing. It's standard for any open source project that the passive-user:active-user:contributor ratio is a decreasing one (95:4:1 as a random gut example), but very nice of Ted to explain this 'stunning' news. Oracle don't represent the 95 any more than the active Hudson community do, and most likely less as the active Hudson community have diversity.

Whatever the outcome, Oracle has once again misjudged open source communities and may have started the ball rolling for a complete abandonment of the Hudson name as well as developers.

1. Back to top

   Does Oracle really own the Hudson trademark?

   by Neil Bartlett

   I can't find anything in TESS.

   Reply

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   Re: Does Oracle really own the Hudson trademark?

   by Neil Bartlett

   Sorry, bad link to TESS, the query seems to be session-based...

   Reply

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   Re: Does Oracle really own the Hudson trademark?

   by Stuart McCulloch

   IANAL, but depending on the country you don't need to proactively register a trademark to get some rights to it.
   
   That's the difference between "tm" which represents an unregistered mark and the "(r)" symbol which represents a registered mark: www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/register.jsp

   Reply

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   Re: Does Oracle really own the Hudson trademark?

   by Luis Machado Reis

   I guess is more easy to fork and choose a new name. It is very common and I approve it if the things are not going be all right!
   
   I'm very pessimist abou Java owned by Oracle. Since at the begin of this new relationship (Oracle x Sun x Java), Java Developers Community have been disrespected day-after-day, project-after-project.

   Reply

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   No disrespect

   by Cameron Purdy

   I'm very pessimist abou Java owned by Oracle. Since at the begin of this new relationship (Oracle x Sun x Java), Java Developers Community have been disrespected day-after-day, project-after-project.

   
   
   Honestly, I don't know what you are referring to. If you're seeing "disrespect" from Oracle employees toward members of the Java Developers Community, please let me know immediately by direct email (first name dot last name at oracle dot com).
   
   Peace,
   
   Cameron Purdy | Oracle Coherence
   coherence.oracle.com/

   Reply

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   Re: Does Oracle really own the Hudson trademark?

   by Richard L. Burton III

   A lot of this "Oracle is going to kill Java" topic is so emotionally driven. I would be interested in hearing how many people actually take Cameron up on his offer.

   Reply

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   Re: Does Oracle really own the Hudson trademark?

   by Kra Larivain

   I don't believe oracle is going to kill Java, specially considering a big part of their business actually relies heavily on java.
   
   What I'm pretty sure about is that Oracle is overall bad at managing relationship with the open source community.
   Oracle being a huge company, some individuals or specific teams/department can do a good job at it, but as a whole, the company is very badly perceived and doesn't appear to know how to handle properly the community.
   
   It's not going to kill the community, as it was there long before Sun open sourced the platform, but I'm expecting more stories like this one.

   Reply

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   Re: Does Oracle really own the Hudson trademark?

   by Cameron Purdy

   What I'm pretty sure about is that Oracle is overall bad at managing relationship with the open source community.
   Oracle being a huge company, some individuals or specific teams/department can do a good job at it, but as a whole, the company is very badly perceived and doesn't appear to know how to handle properly the community.

   
   
   I think this is a pretty fair statement, although I wouldn't limit it to "the open source community" -- I think that Oracle is challenged to better communicate and work more cooperatively with the Java development community in general.
   
   Note that this is not how things have to be, but it's a fair description of where things are today, and it's an area that a lot of people at Oracle are steadily working to improve.
   
   Peace,
   
   Cameron Purdy | Oracle Coherence
   coherence.oracle.com/

   Reply

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