Back in May 2006, Sun announced during the JavaOne conference it would release Java as open source, licensed as GPL software. While it was released as GPL, it still contained about 5 percent proprietary, non-free code - the Java trap, as the FSF calls it. The FSF called to dismantle this trap, and now the IcedTea project has reached an important milestone.
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Member since:2008-06-12
Hear Hear.
Also what a lot of people conviently tend to forget is the fact that the JDK source has always been available. Just not under a license as liberal as the GPL.
But the advantage for a developer being able to debug trough the whole stack of the JDK has always been available.
Member since:2005-07-06
The GPL is not liberal , it's Free Software.
The JDK source was not always available and developer wher enot always able to debug all the problems.
What you conveniently forget is that it means that JAVA from now on , will not be a plug-in or an extension from now on , but will be inlcuded natively.
Member since:2005-07-06
As it was, it was impossible to simply ship a JRE or a JDK in a distribution as-is, and it was impossible for people to debug and track bugs in the tradition of open source development against such a piece of software.
Apart from the last five percent, which we have heard nary anything from Sun on in the past two years other than "We're working on it". Net effect? You still needed a JRE or a JDK from Sun.
Member since:2005-07-06
As it was, it was impossible to simply ship a JRE or a JDK in a distribution as-is, and it was impossible for people to debug and track bugs in the tradition of open source development against such a piece of software. "
It was not impossible. Many distributions did so. It was also not impossible to debug and track bugs since the source code was available -- just not under an open license.
Apart from the last five percent, which we have heard nary anything from Sun on in the past two years other than "We're working on it". Net effect? You still needed a JRE or a JDK from Sun. [/q]
If you had been involved with the OpenJDK effort, you would have heard a lot more than that.
I think you're way too disconnected from the process.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
Well you are completely wrong.
1. Free Software is always better , it goes on more OS , more platform and is never obsolete.
2. The people you call pragmatist are not , pragmatist always have a problem when a big majority of possible client are unserved because of license or technical problems. If there was no huge real paying demand for it SUN would have ignored the demand.
3. The FSF and GPL are pragmatist and practical. Why else would a foundation exist , with a legal team to defend it and be in used and funded by some many peoples first and corporation with the same goal second.
You know the coward that you are part of always have the opportunity to band togheter get a lawyer and go against the FSF and GPL if it's really harming and damaging your industry and your rights and products. But we both know they are not.
4. They both deserve the credit , Sun management for not listening to there developpers who said there was no problem and the one who fixed the "JAVA trap".
Personnaly I know a lot of really good developper who are extremely happy that Java is now an option they can use to improve there Free Software solution.
Surely the inclusion natively of JAVA in GNOME , KDE , xfce , and others negate the noise and compelte irrealism that you and your ilk suffers.
Member since:2005-07-07
2. The people you call pragmatist are not , pragmatist always have a problem when a big majority of possible client are unserved because of license or technical problems. If there was no huge real paying demand for it SUN would have ignored the demand.
You're most certainly not a pragmatist, and you certainly qualify as being halfway deluded.
The JDK was always available to run on Linux. Sure, it was the x86 version and then later the x86-64 version also appeared. Nevertheless, it was always available.
Any desktop user who wanted to run Java could download Java directly from Sun or from the various non-free distro specific repositories. Any enterprise that wanted to run Java on their servers would run Java anyway (see the plethora of Java app servers for Linux).
The biggest problem with the closed source JDK was how little community feedback affected the JDK. See for example http://www.javalobby.org/articles/fixing-the-jdk/. After submitting a bug fix in the old days, you had to wait weeks and months before you heard back from somebody at Sun that your patch was accepted, if you were going to get feedback at all. This is different from other open source projects with a huge community, where feedback is almost instant. I think this slow response to the community's needs is what an Open JDK addresses.
Don't kid yourself that Java was open up so that the various "free" distros can include Java for "free". You gotta ask yourself, as a commercial entity, how is that going to benefit Sun? On the other hand, an Open JDK will make the JDK respond much much quicker to community input, and that is a really awesome thing.
Member since:2005-07-06
In your opinion, perhaps.
I disagree. There are thousands of free software projects that are obsolete, abandoned, and do not work on more than one platform.
Perhaps you do not believe them to be pragmatic, but I believe they are.
You know the coward that you are part of always have the opportunity to band togheter get a lawyer and go against the FSF and GPL if it's really harming and damaging your industry and your rights and products. But we both know they are not.
I don't understand what you wrote. You've jumbled together several different ideas into two different paragraphs.
Personal insults are never an acceptable form of reasoning.
Personnaly I know a lot of really good developper who are extremely happy that Java is now an option they can use to improve there Free Software solution.
Surely the inclusion natively of JAVA in GNOME , KDE , xfce , and others negate the noise and compelte irrealism that you and your ilk suffers.
Java was always an option. Some people just didn't like the solution.
Member since:2008-06-02
Member since:
2005-07-06
It is however true that with the final 5% of non-free code eliminated in the openjdk project the Java Trap as a whole is history.
...and for more pragmatic individuals, there never was a "Java Trap." While the individuals involved are to be congratulated on technical achievement, I still feel that the whole "Java Trap" was more political than practical.
Yes, free software is good, but it isn't always better.
If anyone deserves a large amount of credit here, it is Sun for listening to their developers and doing what they asked for.
Edited 2008-06-19 21:29 UTC