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.
