Red Hat Not Satisfied with Sun's New Java License

This seems like an odd move by Red Hat. Now, I know they don't necessarily get along with Sun, but calling them out on the Distro License after Sun has announced its intention to Open Source Java and giving incompatibility with OLPC as the main reason?? Come on guys, you're better than that. I can only hope the article is a poor summation by the journalist, which is certainly possible these days. While OLPC is an amiable goal (one I should discuss on this blog, and will at some point), it's not a reason for any company to base this kind of decision on. Looking at the OLPC specs, the Sun implementation wouldn't even run in a usable manner anyway. Additionally, Red Hat contributes to classpath and could include that implementation. The one valid reason given in the article is that Red Hat would like to make some specific improvement to Java, centering around real-time capabilities, and I'd guess we'll see a 64-bit Java plugin available soon after it's officially Open Sourced. It will be interesting to see what Red Hat's reaction to the Open Sourcing of Java is if/when it's not GPL compatible. It constantly seems like the biggest proponents of Open Source Java are direct Sun competitors, which along with what Microsoft tried to pull is probably why Sun has been so skiddish on the issue. It should also be noted that, from what I can tell Debian does not approve of the license. If we reach a point that Debian approves of a license that Red Hat doesn't, we're probably in trouble :)
–jeremy
Java, Sun, Red Hat, Open Source, Linux