Giving Up on Upstreaming OpenJDK Patches

Giving Up on Upstreaming OpenJDK Patches

A developer has decided to stop attempting to upstream their patches to the OpenJDK project after facing prolonged delays in the Oracle Contributor Agreement (OCA) process. The developer has made their patches available for others to use, suggesting that interested parties can rewrite and submit them independently.

A developer has announced their decision to cease efforts to upstream patches to the OpenJDK project. This decision comes after a year-long struggle with the Oracle Contributor Agreement (OCA) process, which the developer found to be unresponsive and slow. Despite multiple attempts to resolve the issue, including sending several emails to Oracle, the developer received only apologies and no substantive progress. As a result, they have decided to make their patches available for others to use, encouraging interested parties to rewrite and submit them independently.

The developer began their journey with the OpenJDK codebase in January 2025, with the intention of contributing patches to the repository. However, the process required signing an OCA, which proved to be more complicated than anticipated. After updating the necessary information as requested, the developer continued to face delays, with no clear resolution in sight. Frustrated by the lack of progress and the time-consuming nature of the process, the developer has chosen to step back from their efforts to contribute directly to OpenJDK.

Technical Details

The developer has shared a list of patches they intended to upstream, which they believe are useful despite being small. One patch checks if "llvm-config" is broken, while another extends the default thread stack size for zero, addressing a stack overflow exception in javac when building JDK 24 with zero variants. Additionally, there are patches intended for Loongson's fork of JDK, which were also blocked by the OCA process.

The developer has provided links to these patches, allowing others to access and potentially use them. They have clarified that, due to OCA requirements, any contributions must be original works of authorship. Therefore, interested parties are encouraged to rewrite the patches from scratch to ensure compliance with the agreement.

Availability

The developer has made their patches publicly available, inviting others to pick them up and submit them if desired. They have expressed a willingness for others to use the patches without needing to credit or contact them. This open invitation provides an opportunity for other developers to contribute to OpenJDK or Loongson's fork by building upon the work already done.

Story based on discussion on Hacker News.