Apache quits Java community

The Apache Software Foundation is resigning from the executive committee of the Java Community Process (JCP), the governance body responsible for managing standards related to the Java programming language, writes ARS Technica.

The move is a response to Oracle's ongoing failure to comply with the intellectual property policies established by the JCP. The heart of the issue is that Apache can't certify that its open source Java implementation - called Harmony - conforms with the Java language standards because Oracle refuses to supply the necessary test suites under a suitably open license.

Oracle's position on the issue falls afoul of JCP policies, which stipulate that standards and other relevant materials must be freely redistributable and made available under terms that are conducive to enabling third-party open source implementations.

While mainstream users await Google's pilot program to begin, open source developers are creating builds with the latest ChromeOS code, says ZDNet.

One engineer from Dell built ISO image files that users can burn to USB to “take ChromeOS for a test drive,” reports Steve Pirk, a ChromeOS enthusiast and principal at Yensid, an open source company in Bremerton, Wash.

As Pirk tests that build, the included read.me file on that build indicates that the latest Chrome open source web operating system beta has been tested on Dell's Mini 10v, Mini 9, Latitude 2100 and Mini 10. For the Mini 10, on which this post is being written, the Dell engineer points out in the readme.txt file that the ChromeOS graphical user interface is “very, very slow.”

The proprietary source code a former Goldman Sachs Group programmer is accused of stealing contains a good bit of software that's freely available on the Internet, a defence witness testified last week, states the Wall Street Journal.

Federal prosecutors have alleged that Sergey Aleynikov secretly copied Goldman Sachs's confidential source code for its high-frequency trading platform in his last days at the investment bank and uploaded it to a server in Germany. Prosecutors have alleged that Aleynikov intended to use it to build a similar trading platform at his new employer, Teza Technologies.

Benjamin Goldberg, an associate professor in New York University's computer science department, testified that the downloaded code he examined contained "lots of open source software." Open-source, or freely available, code and Goldman's proprietary code were "all mixed together" in the downloaded material, Goldberg said.