Submitted by Demonstrating a perhaps more aggressive path than anticipated, Sun Microsystems is set to announce the open-sourcing of the core Java platform within 30 to 60 days, Sun President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz said at the Oracle OpenWorld conference on Wednesday morning.
Aggressive?That’s big. I mean,everybody saw it coming,but not tomorrow.ICT world gets more interesting every day.
wow, this is gonna be popular with the OSS lot!!
its also a good blow against .NET and other runtime environments
The sooner you can legally hack the size of the JRE, and GCJ gets some love the better.
I find it interesting to note that a few years ago, KDE had a project named Harmony, which was aimed at creating a LGPL licensed Qt clone. Soon after the start of the project, Trolltech switched Qt/X11’s license to the GPL.
Now didn’t Apache start a new project to produce a J2SE implementation? What was its name again?
Of course, we should also note that GNU Classpath is almost 100% compatible with J2SE 1.4.2
So there’s a jinx in the Harmony name then?
That’s really good news. Be interested to see what comes out of all this in around 6mths to a year, some very interesting projects…
totally agreed, im not a fan of java applications but maybe this will make it better.
and for agresive, this is Sun we ar talking about, for them, this IS agresive.
Ah, those content-free articles are a good way to keep InfoWorld writers employed. Sun already announced open-source HotSpot at JavaOne. Earlier they said October; now that October is here they say Nov/Dec. (That’s aggressive for you; the schedule only slipped by two months!) Still no word on the license.
There is a bunch more info on what’s going on at http://osc.gigavox.com/shows/detail1629.html and http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/23/HNgreenqa_2.html
But , But , But Nobody care … about Open Source.
/sarcastic.
Open Source is crap , go with Free Software.
In my country, we say… when a horse cry, it is like when a man… cry.
That if a horse is good it is like a man is good, and that if a horse is bad, is like a man is bad.
And if a horse is hungry is like a man is hungry, and if a horse is sad is like if a man is sad.
And we say if a horse is happy is like when a man is happy.
We say if a horse is angry is like if man is angry.
We say if a horse walk is like when a man walk, we say if a horse is old is like when a man is old, and we say if horse is young is like when a man is young.
And the same we say if a horse is old is like when a man is old.
And if a horse small, is like when a man’s small.
And if a horse is dead is like if a man dead.
Also we say if a horse is sleep, goes to sleep like if a man sleep.
And if horse wake if like if man wake, and if horse ill, is like if a man ill.
If horse have foot is like man have foot.
If horse on the grass is like if a man walk on grass.
We say if you hit horse it is like if you hit man.
And we say if you kiss horse is like you kiss man.
So we say horse is like man.
Do you understand?
Do you understand?
No 😐
> > Do you understand?
> No 😐
That was exactly my thoughts
“Do you understand?”
Everything relate to horse ? It made me laugh do , thanks
Always cite your sources. Oh, and in my country, we say “Off-Topic!”
http://www.webgeordie.co.uk/borat/usa_extras.htm
Keep up the great work, Sun.
*In Bruno voice*
What would you say makes google the number 1 search engine for gays?
lol
This is a good new for all us, not for the fact itself, but because this means that the change of view from Sun it’s true, not only a test. They make good and innovative hardware (ie: niagara) and software (ie zfs, zones) products, and release them for the market and for the OSS community, slowly aproaching a new and constructive business model.
One of the biggest take a big and great decision.
again????
sorry, couldn’t resist it:)
On the other hand, does anyone know if this “open-sourcing of the core Java platform within 30 to 60 days” means start of putting sources in the wild or whole core part being OSS-ed.
As I remember, Solaris still wasn’t OSS-ed last time I looked into. Meaning, OSS-ing Java at the same speed as Solaris, would mean Java would be OSS-ed somewhere in 2010.
You need to stop smoking crack.
Solaris is pretty damn open sourced.
You need to stop smoking crack.
http://opensolaris.org/os/about/faq/binary_licensing_faq/
Before accusing stupid things, read this. My question went to this topic. Last time I was checking building OpenSolaris without this was impossible.
And they still haven’t made workaround it seems (I was talking about building without binary blobs). No trolling intention was posed from my side. It is just as with NVidia blobs. Some people rather use xorg 2d driver than binary blob. And that is called replacement or workaround.
Now, these parts won’t ever be opensourced. Ok. So what. If kernel can be built without them or if replacement exists this is no problem at all. In this case I will be the first to say that OpenSolaris is open.
If java core is opensourced this means java VM part. So, you get a real open java from Sun. If VM is opensourced the was Solaris was, well no open Java, or at least so soon.
Edited 2006-10-27 00:48
Solaris as a whole? OpenSolaris contains much of what is Solaris, in the CDDL license (OSI approved OSS license.) There are a few parts missing (due to licensing issues with other companies) but OSOL is self-sufficient enough people have been building new distros out of it.
You must be thinking about the year 2000, still.
http://opensolaris.org
Actually, from what I understand OpenSolaris is actually further ahead of Solaris, which is getting things back ported, but due to its ‘mission critical’ nature, the have to be careful.
All the parts which eventually opensourced, those that can’t be will eventually get replaced with opensource components or re-written from scratch; Xorg for example is going to replace Xsun, for example; GNOME replacing CDE as the default desktop, OpenMotif for backwards compatibility.
I’m hopeing that GNUSolaris/Nextenta will eventually improve and get to a stage that I can install in on my laptop and have all my hardware supported out of the box – its getting there, but not quite.
But what does it mean when a language is open sourced? What does this mean for developers?
Almost nothing. Java is already fairly “open” in the sense you can look at all the APIs and so forth. For most developers (unless they intended on adding new functionality to Java itself) will gain exactly 0% out of this. It’ll pave the way for aspiring hackers to contribute to Java itself, but like Open Office and now OSOL, it’s likely to still be >=90% Sun’s work, <=10% OSS community.
It’ll pave the way for aspiring hackers to contribute to Java itself, but like Open Office and now OSOL, it’s likely to still be >=90% Sun’s work, <=10% OSS community.
But Java Platform’s code is not nearly as ugly as OO.o’s code, which is almost unmaintainable!
What it should eventually mean is that it’s a safer option to develop apps in java, because the official sun-originated version of java will be able to be distributed by default with oss oses without any licensing issues. It also means that in the future you’re likely to see more desktop java apps for linux, since the oss java toolchain is likely to expand (beyond what it is now, which is mostly limited to ecplise in conjunction with gcj).
Also keep in mind, we’re talking about the Java platform here, not just the language. Java the language != Java the platform, as is evidenced by the existence of Microsoft’s J++ tools (which run on the .NET platform, but with Java as the language).
Edited 2006-10-27 00:27
java is most used language on sourceforge
But what does it mean when a language is open sourced? What does this mean for developers?
The language is already open. You have been totally free to write java code into your favorite editor for many years now. It is what you use to compile/interpret the code with is what is being opened.
What does it mean to developers?? Really not much, other you might find somebody has ported the VM to another platform. Therefore your code can on a platform it did not run on today.
The process of what Java is will not change. It will still be determined by the JCP.
For desktop linux apps it means easier deployment (as putting JVM on the distros by default will be common practise) and potentially new way that JVM is integrated into linux.
For Joe user – no need to know what the heck java plugin is and how to install it.
For server apps developers, not really much as java was a standard there already.
For developers of embedded systems (which is by far more important platform than desktop) it means end of many licencing barriers (which were far higher that in case of desktop) and open way for innovation and deep integration.
Java’s never gotten traction in the open source world. Definitely not anywhere on the desktop.
And it’s pretty pitifully unstable under some circumstances on servers.
With some new exciting stuff coming out (like ‘D’) and the convenience of running true scriping languages I just don’t see Java doing anything other than continue to lose interest…
Java’s never gotten traction in the open source world.
Did you ever bother visiting apache.org and have a look at their top level projects (most of them are widely used in the enterprise world)? How about looking at the percentage of sf.net projects using Java?
Definitely not anywhere on the desktop.
Although Java was never as popular on the Desktop as it is on Servers, I am sure you have heard about both Azureus and Limewire.
With some new exciting stuff coming out (like ‘D’) and the convenience of running true scriping languages I just don’t see Java doing anything other than continue to lose interest…
Except they don’t have access to the vast amount of libraries and frameworks that Java has. One example would be WebObjects. Another good example would be java.lang.concurrent. Actually, that’s not quite true: many popular scripting languages have Java implementations (eg. JRuby and Mozilla Rhino) which can make use of java frameworks and compile to the Java bytecode.
Edited 2006-10-27 01:11
“Although Java was never as popular on the Desktop as it is on Servers, I am sure you have heard about both Azureus and Limewire.”
Yes, they are both bloatware and slow, just like all Java apps. Give me a mono equivalent any day.
“Although Java was never as popular on the Desktop as it is on Servers, I am sure you have heard about both Azureus and Limewire.”
Yes, they are both bloatware and slow, just like all Java apps. Give me a mono equivalent any day.
So that they may work reasonably well on Gnome, work slowly on KDE and look awful on OS X (not to mention having to run on X11) and Window (I can’t believe I am saying this, but both SWT and Swing will beat GTK any day when it comes to Win32 support).
sure you have no clue what you are talking about.
Yes, they are both bloatware and slow, just like all Java apps. Give me a mono equivalent any day.
I doubt Mono will run any better on your memory constrained machine…
It is java.util.concurrent. But you are right, this is an outstanding library for multithreading written by Doug Lea. It has no equivalent in any language AFAIK. I recently an ETL using a pipeline design with this library and it was an order of magnitude faster than a very optimized C++ version.
This was perhaps the most woefully ignorant post I’ve ever seen on an article at OSNews…honestly.
Java has *massive* open source traction…it has surpassed C++ on sourceforge as the post popular language!!
Pitifully unstable? Are you mad? Java is the engine of some of the largest, most active web applications in the world!
D? Exciting stuff? Who the F*** uses D for anything that you hear big news about?
It’s annoying, to say the least, when someone spouts off about something purely based on opinion and not at all based in reality.
Java has *massive* open source traction…it has surpassed C++ on sourceforge as the post popular language!!
But it remains relatively rare on Linux – AFAIK most distros don’t bundle it at present (correct me if I’m wrong on that one). I wouldn’t consider Sourceforge project numbers a good measure of “open source traction”, but it depends what you’re trying to measure with that term.
Pitifully unstable? Are you mad? Java is the engine of some of the largest, most active web applications in the world!
It depends heavily on the VM it’s running in, and they aren’t all created equal. Maybe the previous poster was aiming at something a little more obscure than, say, the x86 VM which is obviously pretty solid by now.
I think it’s a good move by Sun, and long past time – I’m not sure what they gained by keeping it closed.
Playing nice with open source definately strikes me as a good idea – .NET is a big threat to Java. Maybe the enemy of Sun’s enemy is their friend.
But it remains relatively rare on Linux – AFAIK most distros don’t bundle it at present (correct me if I’m wrong on that one).
It would be nice if some distro’s could get of their GPL high-horse and distribute Java. Without it Linux is a poor Java development platform. Distributing gcj as a java substitute just adds to the confusion.
Hopefully this will change when Sun fully release it. Though personally I hope they release it under CDDL
But it remains relatively rare on Linux – AFAIK most distros don’t bundle it at present (correct me if I’m wrong on that one).
It would be nice if some distro’s could get of their GPL high-horse and distribute Java. Without it Linux is a poor Java development platform. Distributing gcj as a java substitute just adds to the confusion.
Hopefully this will change when Sun fully release it. Though personally I hope they release it under CDDL
While open sourcing Java would make distros’ lives even easier. Sun already devised a simplified license for Java distribution (DCJ). This allows you to install Java 5 under Ubuntu in the following way:
https://jdk-distros.dev.java.net/ubuntu.html
Java has a very, very large open source community around it and Sun is encouraging that heavily with nearly *all* of their (previously) closed software.
Don’t believe me? Fine, don’t go to sourceforge, go to java-source.net Or, try Java.net…or just look around generally – if you need something Java and you’d prefer it open and free…you’re sure to find just what you need. Let’s not forget, to top all of that off, your tools and entire development stack can easily (and with great quality) come to you at no charge at all. Eclipse, Netbeans, JBoss, Glassfish, Hibernate, Tomcat, Resin, and the list goes on.
I don’t think you can blame it on the VM implementation and not place most of the blame on the guy who installs the wrong VM, configures it incorrectly, and generally doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing…perhaps he had all of the problems above…either way that was a broadly ignorant statement. It’s like someone saying “C++ is pitifully unstable…my apps keep crashing!” I’m not a C++ programmer, by the way. I realize C++ is a lower-level technology and doesn’t run on a VM but I think you can see where I’m going w/ that.
Anyhow, I have to wholly agree with you…I can’t wait until the entire stack is opened. I’m already developing against Glassfish and the new versions of Netbeans are incredible…advancing rapidly!
I’ve developed on both the .NET side (for years, regularly) and the last couple of years, Java. I can honestly say that .NET is not a threat to Java…not from where I’m standing. Java has the backing of the biggest tech (and other) corporations around, .NET is backed by…well…Microsoft.
We could debate that ad nauseum but there’s no point, it’s off the topic.
Different worlds we come from. And yes, this particular case is just a single case.
The problem with the server was the code was utter crap. GIS application, it was using memory to do image processing on pieces that sometimes exceeded physical memory. Lots and lots of 100’s of megabyte allocations and deallocations per second isn’t exactly something java excels at.
The server consistently crashes on:
Sun Hardware – solars 8 & 9, Sun’s VM
x86 Hardware – sun official, blackdown, ibm, some other one
amd64 Hardware – sun official
Some of the VM’s above lasted longer than others (10’s of hours compared with few hours).
Again, this is a single example. On the server side.
A big reason why associates of mine in the unix world who run EXCLUSIVELY linux/bsd on their desktop don’t like java much is because of the resources required to run the applications, not to mention how desktop applications are still generally very picky about which version of the VM they run on.
There’s more excitement about newer server frameworks using ruby, python, lua. On the high performance side more than a few people are looking forward to getting their hands on ‘D’ as a production language.
The JVM getting released is interesting , but I still believe it’s several years too late. The technology in the VM is likely going to be more interesting than JAVA itself.
Edited 2006-10-27 16:27
Lots and lots of 100’s of megabyte allocations and deallocations per second isn’t exactly something java excels at.
Did you try reengineering your application to accomodate the fact that GCs generally suck at rapidly allocating/deallocating memory? There isn’t enough time for the GC to be called, hence your application is crashing. It’s a no brainer, really.
Tried reusing objects or object pooling?
The problem with the server was the code was utter crap
Well, you admitted it.
A big reason why associates of mine in the unix world who run EXCLUSIVELY linux/bsd on their desktop don’t like java much is because of the resources required to run the applications
Java is most suitable for large applications where you need its features to manage the complexity of the code and where the runtime overhead will be insignificant.
In a word, it’s not suitable for “Hello World” applications.
not to mention how desktop applications are still generally very picky about which version of the VM they run on.
Are you talking about between maintenance releases (5.0_05 and 5.0_06) or between major versions (1.4.2 and 5.0)?
But what does it mean when a language is open sourced?
The very concept is meaningless. But what Sun is actually opening is the HotSpot VM.
The very concept is meaningless. But what Sun is actually opening is the HotSpot VM.
Wow, you really explained that one.
Modded +4? Cmon guys..
It’s not just the VM, it’s the platform class libraries. All those wonderful classes you use in java.io.*;, java.awt.*;, etc. and thier platform-specific JNI bindings.
You people are retards.
Oh wait, no, you’re just totally uneducated.
And this code has been _available_ for review, development, testing, etc. FOR YEARS.
I downloaded java 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 long ago, direct from Sun. The difference is in the license. Now it’s easier for you to contribute back, reuse, and modify for your own use — without paying a licensing fee.
its DOA.
Call me fanatic, but all I can think about right now is how Haiku will greatly benefit from this ;D
That’s great – I wonder what licence will be used.
I guess it will end up in an OO.O like organisation structure, with a dual license. Under somewhat SUN control.
Hopefully it will encourage more developers to port Java to the small platforms and truely make Java crossplatform, instead of just multiplatform.
This is very interesting…so now would it be possible to peek inside the ‘defineClass’ native implementations and write encrypted class loaders? because until now there is no way to do such a thing…
Hopefully Sun goes all the way with this! The OS zealots will no longer be able to bash java on the basis that it’s closed. I imagine this will result in less flame wars everytime there’s a java article posted on osnews.
Will this mean the end of jdk and jre’s restricive distribution methods?
Currently they cannot be distributed in binary form, in OpenBSD (for example), there is no binary package, so the port has to be built. But even that is not automatic because you still have to go to Sun’s website to download the source code. FreeBSD is able to distribute java only because they paid thousands of dollars in legal fees to negotiate a licence.
“FreeBSD is able to distribute java only because they paid thousands of dollars in legal fees to negotiate a licence.”
Can you please cite your source…
“FreeBSD is able to distribute java only because they paid thousands of dollars in legal fees to negotiate a licence.”
Can you please cite your source…
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2001-December/0…
“In negotiating the JDK/JRE license, where both parties were in almost immediate agreement to the license terms, the Foundation still spent in excess of $3000 on legal fees”
Sun later revoked the licence and forced FreeBSd to re-negotiate it:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Sun_revokes_FreeBSD_s_Jav…
I’m not sure how much they had to pay to distribute with FreeBSD 6.0. The only reference I found $35000, but that included development costs (http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/unix/bsd/archives/deb-goodkin-from-the-f…).
I do know that they were able to leverage the legal work from 6.0 for the 6.1 release (http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/press/2006Jul-newsletter.shtml#Jav…)
(added $35k reference)
Edited 2006-10-27 17:02
Free BSD people are happy with Java, and it is normal to pay trade mark fees since they are using Sun’s name and Sun does not have official FreeBSD distribution.
“Java Binaries Available for FreeBSD 5.5 and 6.1
We are proud to announce we have available certified Java Runtime Environment(JRE) and Java Development Kit (JDK) binaries for the FreeBSD 5.5 and 6.1 operating systems. These were built on the latest J2SE 5.0 Update 7 release from Sun Microsystems.
When we released the last binaries, only three months ago, we received many requests to add support for the AMD64 platform. In showing our commitment to the FreeBSD community and making FreeBSD a fully capable Java platform, we have provided certified binaries for FreeBSD 6.1/AMD64.
The cost of this project was just under $20,000. This paid for a developer to work full-time on the project. This was much less than the $37,000 paid for the FreeBSD 5.4 and 6.0 versions. We were able to leverage the legal work from the first release, so we didn’t incur legal costs this time around.
Support for OEMs was added in June. Sun worked with us to provide licensing and trademark requirements for OEMs. OEMs must agree to the OEM license agreement including Exhibit A, before downloading the binaries. Exhibit A will help you understand if you will need a commercial license from Sun and how to get a trademark license with Sun.
We are committed to bringing the latest Java technology to the FreeBSD community. But, we can’t continue to fund the projects without receiving some significant donations. This project was mostly funded from our reserves. When you look at our financial data, you’ll see we’ve received around $8000 in donations this year. We hope if you benefit from this project or FreeBSD in general, that you will consider donating to The FreeBSD Foundation. We’d like to note that this work could not have been completed without the hard work of volunteers that include Greg Lewis, Kurt Miller, and Foundation members. We’d also like to mention that Yahoo! donated an AMD64 system for this project. “
Free BSD people are happy with Java, and it is normal to pay trade mark fees since they are using Sun’s name and Sun does not have official FreeBSD distribution.
I’m not disputing that FreeBSD is happy with their arangement. If you had taken the time to follow the entire thread, you would have noticed that I had originally asked if this new “open source” announcement would mean that Sun had relaxed their distribution licence (giving OpenBSD as an example of a project that has problems with it). I mentioned the FreeBSD case to illistrate how Sun’s distribution licence is restrictive (IE: not true open source). A subsequent poster then asked me to cite my sources about the costs that FreeBSD had to pay (apparently he didn’t believe me).
Also, you are incorrect in regards to the fees being paid for Sun’s “trademark”. The fees were paid for lawyers to draft an acceptable distribution licence for FreeBSD. Money was also spent for a developer to actually port the source code to FreeBSD.
First of all, it’s still not clear whether this is just hotspot or everything in J2SE. Sun had already announced a while back that they would open source hotspot fairly soon. Java VMs are really a dime a dozen these days. The big release will be when Sun opens up the libraries.
I’d like to see a two-tiered approach to VM development. First, would be the conservative, tried-and-true approach that Sun has already been following. The second tier would be a experimental group where the VM can be tweaked to experiment with functional and dynamic language support. This is where the JVM has been lacking. The good thing about this is that Sun can just sit back and see where the trends go, and then fold back in the interesting bits for production, commercial usage.
Someone mentioned that it was too late for Java on the OSS desktop. That is a somewhat valid point. Sun pushed Swing for so many years, and nobody was really interested in Swing on Gnome or KDE. Hell, even though Sun is a Gnome contributor they never did anything with the Java-Gtk bindings. Now Mono is firmly entrenched on the desktop, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. Of course Java still rules the server, so it’ll have that niche.
P.S. Sun didn’t do this to be “open source good guys”. They’re experiencing a round of engineering layoffs, and they just can’t afford these costs anymore. Sun will never recoup the Java development costs that they’ve incurred over the years.
It’s because they may feel the tide turning on java.
They may feel the competition whiddling away market share.
Where do you think the competition is coming from, primarily?
Hmm, I seem to remember those good fellows at Gnome picking Mono to ship with their WDM, *just* for a note taking application and an image thumbnailer.
… So every copy of Ubuntu comes by default with a working .Net environment. wtg Gnome.
If you are truly going to open source ALL of Java, I would applaud this move; if it’s a partial, lame, limp-wristed attempt to weasel good press at the expense of doing anything useful, I wouldn’t consider it worthwhile. But let’s keep our fingers crossed.
I have little doubt that Sun’s management probably gathered in a smoke-filled room somewhere, looked at their pie-charts, and pounded their fists on the table in an attempt to wring revenue from Java. But, since Java’s primary advantage is its relative openness (ie. Java Community Process) compared to Microsoft’s .NET initiative, it probably dawned on them that they needed to treat Java as a loss leader in promoting their own development tools and platform. Quite frankly, I’m a little surprised that Sun didn’t at least adopt the practice of releasing its latest versions of Java on Solaris first, followed by other platforms a month or two later. This would have given Solaris a small advantage. Keep in mind, I’m not advocating this practice. I’m just surprised that Sun never thought of it.
More interestingly, I’d like to know what other people think about Java’s role/place in the industry now. It’s competing against a number of alternatives. Has its star faded a bit? Who do you think its primaary competitors are?
Edited 2006-10-27 20:48
> Quite frankly, I’m a little surprised that Sun didn’t at least adopt the practice of releasing its latest versions of Java on Solaris first, followed by other platforms a month or two later.
That’s how it used to be in 1.1-1.2 (and may be even 1.3) days.
The customers weren’t happy.
Dmitri
I’m always puzzled about how many people that know almost nothing about the subject, are willing to comment it.
OK, from the beginning. Sun will opensource WHOLE JSE (and JME actually, lets not forget about micro edition that is present practically on evety mobile phone sold today). Which means the will opensource whole Java Development Kit (JDK). Compilers, tools, API’s, libraries, Swing, Java2D, io, nio, lang, OpendGL pipeline, D3D pipeline, x64 ports, Solaris, Windows, Linux builds, everything. Who is interested to know what JDK has inside, can check it on java.sun site.
They will OS everything that they can. There ARE some pieces (although not to many) that don’t belong to Sun.
Meaningfully opensourcing something that big cannot be done overnight. They have to choose the license, the best process for outsiders to contribute, the best process to keep Java standardized (plenty of people are afraid of to many forks), version control system, lots of lawyers stuff etc etc. So it all will probably go gradually, starting with HotSpot and javac in 2006, followed by the rest in 2007. And it will be all done and finished in 2007 (and I personally think early 2007) because JSE7 has to be done by end 2008, and JSE7 will be first opensource Java version.
This will actually be one of the biggest contributions to open source, ever. And it should be a great push for open source as a way of thinking and working in IT, and for Java as a platform (do not forget that with this move, practically every bit of Java-The-Platform becomes opensourced, from smallest MicroEdition, through StandardEdition, all the way to the Enterprise Edition. From mobiles to hosts).
I’m always puzzled about how many people that know almost nothing about the subject, are willing to comment it.
Actually, some of us were commenting on how the article got it wrong regarding what and when things are going to be open sourced.
Said C++ to Java: welcome to the Open Source world, it’s about time you got here