Could Harmony just rebrand and go its own way? i.e. people would be "Harmony developers" instead of "Java developers" but it would be the same thing. Or are there patent or licence obstacles to this? A platform run by Google and Apache would have a core of great engineering and the pick of the best libraries.

I appreciate that ASL is in reality an impossible boat to turn because it relies on the voluntary contribution of dozens of key developers, each running private projects with investments in software based on the existing VM tradition.