In response to an open letter from IBM asking Sun to join the company in developing an open-source version of Java, Sun plans to meet with IBM to discuss the issue, Sun sources said. Sun officials planned to meet with IBM as early as Thursday to discuss the merits of whether the company should work with IBM on an independent project to create an open-source implementation of Java.
Sun to Meet IBM Over Freeing Java
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this is a huge step in the right direction.
Java’s big card is its hardware agnosticism. As Mono matures, the potential to run C#, coupled with the GUI fragmentation of Java, is going to reduce the argument in favor of Java to ‘Well, it wasn’t invented in Redmond’.
Anyone have the link to IBM’s letter?
… for SUN to do. I understand SUN’s hestitation since Java is their “Ace in the whole” – but C# is becoming a viable option (as the previous post pointed out). For some of the major issue’s with the JVM to get worked out (e.g. memory foot print etc) and for the future development and features to grow – SUN is way too slow. The world is at a much faster pace compared to when Java was introduced. And if you don’t keep up – you’ll be forgotten.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5828
I agree in principle. But I’d say .Net in general cannot fully mature while fragmentation is built into the overall design. You need look no further than the Windows.Forms / Gtk# debacle to see the evidence. I’d rather choose the swing toolkit if it means I only have to write a rich UI once and I get full portability.
This, in truth, is what frustrates me most about .Net. I applaud M$ for choosing to standardize their technology. This makes it more attractive to me than Java in some ways. But then they begin turning old tricks and I can only scream my frustration! They choose to fragment some of the most important portions of the class libraries.
I understand that they couldn’t care less about portability. I really do get it. Its all about their platform to them. But a technology cannot mature by definition if it remains forever framented.
*** ok. thats it. i’ve run out of steam and i’m climbing down from my soapbox ***
They like they way Java is managed because it keeps them relevant, and lets face it with more server sales reportedly going to IBM last quarter, there seems to be little motivation for them to barter away the last thing keeping them on the radar.
I predict a short meeting where Sun execs will say “thanks for the comments, see you at the next JCP meeting”.
I hope so, Java needs more big guns to grow its marketshare.
About the GUI toolkit. I gotta disagree. Look at IBM’s SWT toolkit and compare it to Java’s Swing. Not even in the same range.
Man I love IBM as a company. Every once in awhile they are involved in cool headlines like this, for the better. I really hope Sun gets on the bandwagon with IBM so we can get a _free_ java runtime out there.
If they open source it, I can’t imagine the OSS community doing much with it except forking it into pieces – we’d have as many Java variants as we do package managers.
Sun is in talks with IBM about “freeing” DB2.
This is a bit of opportunism by IBM. They’ve decided to ride a wave of support generated by ESR in hopes of serving their own business interests under the guise of helping Sun serve their own business interests, when Sun has clearly stated their reasoning for why this would not be beneficial for them.
If the project is managed in a centralised way then there is little forkage.
Is the Linux kernel forked? Not from what I know as far as forkage in Linux is concern it has happened at the distro level with differences in software distributions and slight file directory layouts.
On the other hand, there has been concerted efforts recently to remedy the forkage between distros and expect there to be less of this in the future.
So, someone was saying something about OSS projects and forkage? No worse than any other model in my books, look at our supreme closed sourced leaders and then lets look at software interoperability and backwards compatability if you need any hints just think Word, that might get the brain chugging.
There are passionate views for the open source Java proposition, but maybe I missed it, never much of an logical argument made to support those passions. I couldn’t find one in ESR letter either.
What would be the advantage of OSJ over the “benevolent dictatorship” of JCP?
Are people advocating the Linux model – a lord high commiter (presumably Sun or an ISO group) and open source patches contributed from the community, or the competition of numerous separate forked projects?
What advantages would OSJ deliver and why?
First of all, the idea that sun could open soure java in various licenses (excluding GPL) is not a good idea since microsoft takes BSD and MIT code themselves. However, What about creating their own license that prevents big companies like microsoft from exploiting those technologies? Hm… Sun wants to do it they just dont know what license. They also claim Java is the heart of their software business, if java dies then sun software dies.
thanks!
> What advantages would OSJ deliver and why?
Ever seen the Java bugparade? All those bugs that have 1000’s of votes but no fixes for years? Some of those are very trivial to fix, and if someone at Sun started taking patches from external developers and merging them, after review, there would be a lot of bugs fixed between releases.
And people like truly open standards. e.g. Linux distros would start bundling Sun’s JDK, which means more developers, more testers. Of course, this depends on the license under which they release it.
I’m not sure it makes any sense to fork off such a large project. The class libraries are huge.
But all this is just talk, we don’t know what Sun will decide. I suspect this has more to do with lawyers than the technical aspects.
less effort could be wasted in similar projects (like Kaffe, IBM Java SDK, Sun Java SDK) and more collaborative work could be used in one big project.
This is what somehow already occur in many projects (unlike what people usually think) like kernel, gcc, apache, samba, etc.
So, for sure, will be a great thing for everybody (unless, of course, Microsoft).
Don’t think Sun will lose anything, as fas as I can see, will be great for them. They can keep the leadership position in the project (and so their status) and divide the cost with IBM and the community. This is anyway, together with less dependence of other company, what drives business interest to free/open software.
Hi
The major advantage of open source java is the tight integration it would recieve from linux distribution. stuff like eclipse, ant, tomcat and jboss would be there with every distro. now fedora core 2 already includes some java stuff like tomcat and eclipse compiled with gcj but obviously constrained with the amount of majurity of free implementation. basically the class library is so huge that it would take a good amount of time so sun’s participation would get a very real boost and everyone would enjoy the commitment
regards
Jess
Personally I think that opening JAVA will cause a big damage to the Industry. This has nothing to do with the open source or free software philosophy in general but opening code of such an important keyfactor of nowadays Industry standards will cause damage because of the heavy changes that may happen. In the past couple of years we got JAVA from one hand and we knew that they were doing their best to guarantee stability, API compatibility and simply functionality, with the open source movement I fear that there will be too many changes happening in all areas within JAVA which will make it become incompatible, broken or maybe forked into other versions of JAVA because there are people disagreeing. Such heavy changes will affect a lot of programs based on JAVA or websites who use JAVA based applications. I think that SUN will do best to ignore these pressures from outside and concentrate on releasing new JAVA version from time to time. Everything coming form one HAND which guarantees that Business, IT, Services and so on continue to work properly. Opening means that it will start to sprawl. Not opening of course means that other Systems may not benefit from it. But what is more important, keeping a good base foundation of a working Solution or have it start sprawling and getting unusable ?
If forks can be avoided (okay within a organization, bad out in the wild) that is.
Pros:
1) The could include it in distros that refuse to include non GPL software…
2) ???
Cons:
1) few people have much gain if Java is forked into separate versions, it would create compatibility problems.
Conclusion:
If there is something you think Java could do better and would be practical and worth while to implement than submit it to the Java community or Jun and they will make the changes. Java does not need to be open for this to happen.
If the only reason you want Java to be open is so it is open than you should seek help.
I don’t think that all these concerns about forks hold water. Was kernel development forked or damaged? No. And about apache, gcc, gnome, kde, … ? No.
About fast changes. Well, many projects already addressed issues about that having a STABLE branch and a DEVELOPMENT (and/or RELEASE) one. Anyway, because it’s open doesn’t means that no one will be responsable for the whole project, we have Linus for kernel, commitees for other projects (like FreeBSD, …) and probably that would be Sun role with Java, so what is all this fuss?
And don’t forget, we ALREADY HAVE many projects in Java doing the same work! Cooperation can only help by now.
> Was kernel development forked or damaged ? No.
Open Source and Free Software is NOT limited to Linux or BSD only. There are many architectures even NON opened who benefit from this in the one or other way.
> And about gcc,
GCC got forked into egcs and years later GCC got dropped and egcs took it’s new place as GCC. But in the meanwhile (the years where we had two paths) we had to deal with a lot of pain and problems.
> gnome, kde, … ? No.
No, but they are influencing a lot of projects and we see once good and usefull solutions moving the way of GNOME or KDE which makes us depend on either GNOME or KDE on a long go. You can be sure that forks cause a lot of problems on the long go because no one really knows what’s up next.
See a recent example XFree86. First we were talking about Xouvert as the successor to XFree86 because a team of people branched it and wanted to make huge changes with auto* tools and configure scripts etc. Later on FreeDesktop forked XFree86 (sure they do have skilled people and some of them even were developers of the root of the X protocol). But you need to look the long run. X f.d.o is yet again going though a pain of huge changes which will for sure make people become irritated because they don’t really know where the future leads, will it be AcceleratedX, will it be XFree86, will it be X f.d.o ? They will ask questions like, will my games like quake3, enemy territory, urban terror etc. work on it ? Won’t all these changes not cause problems ? Adding stuff like real transparency, drop shadows and all these eyecandy. Won’t this affect older programs ? Will the apps still work ?. Even these so called f.d.o selfish declared standards already DO cause a lot of problems like apps misbehaving, not supporting their specifications etc. and the biggest problem of all is convincing open source developers to have these things all fixed. As somone mentioned above, you don’t pay for open source so don’t complain. So if you are not allowed to complain, how do you get a change or even this software fixed properly ? If the author doesn’t agree, yet again you fork.
I’d rather have a huge industry standart such as JAVA stay closed source and dealt under one hood. This guarantees Quality Assurance and due this to be a large accepted system they (SUN) have to take action on their own to keep JAVA up to date, enchanced, fixed and polished. Since they need to defend their IP in the public as serious and reliable solution where million of Webpages and Applications depend on. Even Security stuff depends on JAVA these days. This can’t be made open and given into the hands of kids who then trash it. Open Source movement may be a nice thing but we are always stuck into problems too like one bug if fixed but two new bugs have been created, or some stuff that previously worked got trashed because they yet again changed the working code to something totally different.
A few years ago (say 5 years) everything was kept in a way so you can look over it but nowadays the community is increasing permanently, more code is being written, more stuff being supported, more developers with half knowledge show up and change stuff they shouldn’t ever have touched and and and. Nobody can be held responsible for all the damages, problems, all you can do is whine after these person, yes sometimes flame or attack him only to get your wishes noticed and hopefully fixed (assuming that not everyone is a developer).
Open Source means shortlife of Software, rather keeping things stable and following a clear roadmap of stability and reliability (Quality Assurance) here on the otherhand things change rapidely, API is being trashed, new stuff added, huge chunks of code re-written (sometimes code is being rewritten multiple times and yet they again re-write it) and so on.
Something that definately should NOT happen with JAVA. A little sidenote about GNOME and forking, sorry bud but you are wrong. In the past 5 Years where I was participating to GNOME a lot of old people I knew left the project and searched something else they can work on (and with). We know that forking such a big project is indeed problematic (same is valid for JAVA) but if we don’t like it we have the choice to use another Desktop System (KDE, MacOSX, Windows, QNX, MorphOS). But what chances do we have with JAVA ? There isn’t something similar that can replace it but yet many of us depend on it.
So as you can see, it’s not always just FORKING stuff. Sometimes on disagreement people also leave the entire project and leave it to the remaining bits of developers who continue hacking on it (because they may get paid to do so) and hope that other people temporarely participate to it so it continues to mature (if possible because when people permanently change then there is no progress either).
There are some current problems with compatibility with IBM’s Java, SUN’s Java and the Kaffe Java VMs.
The hope of the Open Source process is that this could get ironed out a lot quicker than otherwise.
> There are some current problems with compatibility with
> IBM’s Java, SUN’s Java and the Kaffe Java VMs.
>
> The hope of the Open Source process is that this could get
> ironed out a lot quicker than otherwise.
Next question: How do you IRON OUT (to use your words) the millions of programs that may become incompatible afterwards or behave strange due to the changes ? There are also a lot of software that work around on existing problems and then ? Once these huge changes happened stuff doesn’t work anymore. Companies like financial institute update to a new JAVA version and figure out that their special written application that deals with millions of daily recordings don’t work properly anymore or misbehave (which they initially didn’t noticed) and then ? Thanks to some kids contributing a bunch of junk to the Open Source JAVA big companies who have to pay salleries to their employees got a big shitsnitz because of this.
Ever seen the Java bugparade? All those bugs that have 1000’s of votes but no fixes for years?
Yes I have seen it. To be accurate, as of today, there are no bugs with 1000s of votes.
There one is notorious class loader deadlock issue which has over 700 votes. The next highest has only half as many, and only 27 bugs have more than 50 votes.
KDE by contrast does have a bug (41514) with 1304 votes, it also has over 100 bugs with more than 50 votes.
This is not to knock KDE or to praise Sun for not fixing their class loader bugs for 3 years, but it does leave the claims that Sun negleting bugs and OSS patches would cure Java’s “problems” open to some weary eyed skepticism.
Aidan
Next question: How do you IRON OUT (to use your words) the millions of programs that may become incompatible afterwards or behave strange due to the changes?
That is an interesting question. It’s one of the things waiting to happen with Microsoft’s .NET as well – in this case, because Microsoft arrogates to itself the right to make changes without notification.
But the way you’ve posed the question also says you don’t believe there’s an answer. There is – if the companies concerned are interested and willing to be involved in the process, they get to check out all the changes as they take place, and far from your despairing scenario of:
Thanks to some kids contributing a bunch of junk to the Open Source JAVA
the companies involved, get to make sure they keep up with the play.
Just because you don’t have a clue as to how the process works, doesn’t mean it can’t and won’t work. It just means you personally don’t have a clue.
I also agree that the “fork issue” is a red-herring. There are many licensing options which could be pursued and if the interested parties put their minds to it reasonable solutions can be found. Not having Java included by default in Linux distributions is simply foolish. And this is not caused by distro’s not wanting to distribute non-GPL software- this is caused by Sun’s license, which explicity precludes distros from distributing Java.
With a freely distributed Java,(ie. Java is free, but not freely distributed) Java would become ubiquitous and this accessibilty and availability can only help generate the mindshare of Java and the number of competent Java programmers. Having IBM and Sun working together on open sourcing Java is a boone to both companies and of course to the wider community at large. Distributions could then begin to really integrate the development resources around Java- providing an excellent Java development system-out of the box. Projects like gcj would get a profound boost and many other projects (Kaffee etc.) would be able to focus on providing new improvements and features instead of trying to play catch-up with the ever elusive goal of jdk-1.x.x implementation standards.
Sun has recently announced the Java Desktop System. Yet there has been very little in the way of positive resonance in the Linux community for this product. Why is this so ? Is it because Linux gets second class treatment as regards Linux ? Is it because Sun is naive enough to believe that they can impact the Linux world without even involving the Linux community ? This is a slap in the face. Sun, if it is to pursue its JDS plans needs the support of the Linux community.
Sun has contributed to the community immensely- their work with OpenOffice.org and GNOME are just two of the more obvious efforts. But Sun is not seen as part of the community, where IBM has already achieved this status. Sun appears to want to compete with Linux- yet Linux does not compete with Sun- rather Linux on IBM/HP/SGI hardware competes with Solaris on Sun hardware. Now is the time for a gesture of goodwill- of trust and openness. This can and will strengthen the Java community as a whole.
One other possible benefit of open sourcing Java would be the possibility of various open source projects being able to pool their workloads and combine their code base to enable new developments which within the current scheme are impossible.
In the Linuxword article,http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2004-02-24-023-26-OP-CY-…,
the author mentions the possiblity of submitting XUL(from Mozilla) for W3C standardization and exploring it’s integration with Java:
“XUL, at the most superficial level, provides richer widgets than HTML, such as scrollable tables, collapsible trees and tab folders. It is a brilliantly-architected rich client that happens to be thin as well, because it’s based on XML. Microsoft, as usual, has seen the light early, and has “innovated” XAML based on XUL’s pioneering features, but Sun and the rest of the industry are still caught in a user-interface time warp.
Sun can lend credibility to Mozilla and XUL.
Sun should work with the Mozilla Foundation to get XUL endorsed as a W3C standard. Rich web applications, exploiting XUL and other W3C-endorsed technologies such as SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and SMIL (Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language), should feature in the next version of the Java Desktop System (By the way, Sun, we forgive you for not calling it the Linux Desktop System, which it really is).”
This idea is not new-it has been around for many years-and in fact this idea was inspirational in the development of Mozilla in the first place-The XUL framework represented the single biggest challenge in the re-write of the old Netscape code and precipitated Mozilla going open source. Perhaps one should let bygones be bygones-but Java+XUL integration would be palpable middleware-ideal for server/client implementations of network applications. For those who remember what this was all about-food enough for thought for a long time to come.
I certainly hope that the talks between IBM and Sun will be the start of something, something which which all parties will profit.
> Just because you don’t have a clue as to how the process
> works, doesn’t mean it can’t and won’t work. It just means
> you personally don’t have a clue.
Excuse me, the first part of your reply sounds quite mature until I read the last part. Just asking but who are you claiming the right that I don’t have a clue ? Who are you to value this ? My worries that I brought up here are indeed correct and relevant. You shouldn’t start your reply with
That is an interesting question.
And then later on tell me that I have no clue. I for my own have seen a lot of problems within the Open Source and Free Software movement and not everything we get and deal with every day is a mature solution or from best wisdom. To say the truth I do see a lot of shit being developed even in these days. From fanatics who seriously claim that they are doing everything right and correct where a lot of experts have been grown from one day to another. Sorry but this doesn’t work that way.
like jboss – a sucecssful project – they can specify and certify against the java specs… and let people implement ohow they like… and give them some sourec code to get started.
even idm could open source their own jvm and compilers ….
it would be good to get java proper working on netbsd, freebsd, and others without confidence reducing hacks. of course sun would still benefit from much more uptake
t
1) OSS community forking the language to pieces.
2) IBM making a JM, without the V.
“Is the Linux kernel forked?”
most likely yes.
it will be very interesting to see lotus notes client, lotus smart suite, os/2 and db2 released as oss.
perhaps not the full package, or not the last version, but it will be very interesting anyway. what do you think?
Opensourcing the communicator made the browser better? Sure! It ttake long time but today Mozilla/Firebird is the best browser on earth. Where is Netscape now? It’s dead. Sadly.
Sun now has similar problems like Netscape 5 years ago.
– Beside Java itself, Sun has nothing to offer. Sun One App Server cannot gain marketshre against IBM Websphere or BEA Weblogics.
– Sun is not able to make Solaris THE plattform to run java apps.
Those problem are real and Sun managers have to deal with that. And they choose to hold back the competitors by keeping java close sourced. Remember Sun’s biggest competitor were and still is IBM.
I don’t really know if open sourcing java would make it better. But I can understand Sun’s intention to keep it close sourced.
So dear Sun managers, it’s a hard time to make the right decision. I wish you good luck!
PS. I like everything from that company, expect the sun one craps 😉
> Opensourcing the communicator made the browser better ?
> Sure ! It take long time but today Mozilla/Firebird is the
> best browser on earth. Where is Netscape now? It’s dead.
Maybe you have missed it but the new Mozilla doesn’t base on the old Netscape code. After it got opened a bunch of developers peeked into it and decided that it would be best to start from scratch. And this is what happened and that is what you refer as best Browser on earth.
Java ALREADY HAVE many CONCURRENT projects going on! So what exactly is the problem to integrate them all?
This is not just a matter of Open/Free paradigm. I like FOSS, I use it but it is another kind of animal. This is to be seen as a very large cooperative project where all parts can benefit from. If the problem is LGPL, as someone said something about that too, just use or create another kind of license.
Even Microsoft should be allowed to cooperate (even though I doubt they want).
It has nothing to do with relax standards but with enforce them and, at same time, build a way to inhibit the re-invention of the wheel, so that we can have a faster patching/improvement/innovation cycle. And, as already said also, we can have a STABLE and a DEVELOPMENT branch.
Sun can have the final word, can guide it, that’s great, but can and will benefit from skilled people, from IBM, from Universities, from Kaffe project, from JBOSS working on improving it instead of re-inventing it.
And, come on, all these histories of kids working on IMPORTANT and COMPLEX projects (really contributing to them), it’s anecdotical, it’s mythology. For sure, there are some very smart young developers working (Linus and Miguel for example), but as a whole we have a overstated press news behind it.
You are right about the issue with rewriting the communicator from scratch. But that is a detail note. But in my posting, I wanted to pointed out the similar situation between Sun has with java today and Netscape with the communicator 5 years ago. I just hope Sun will learn from Netscape case and make the right decision (for the future of the company and java.) That is.
By Anonymous (IP: —.dip.t-dialin.net)
> Maybe you have missed it but the new Mozilla doesn’t base on
> the old Netscape code. After it got opened a bunch of
> developers peeked into it and decided that it would be best
> to start from scratch. And this is what happened and that is
> what you refer as best Browser on earth.
yes, that’s true.
but Mozilla, the project, still benefits a LOT from Netscape (later AOL) and its developers.
and Mozilla, the browser (Seamonkey), is also got some document architecture from old Netscape, as well as JavaScript (not sure about the implementation itself).
— generally speaking, Netscape, the compamy, did invented many technologies that Mozilla use now (or used to use)
but well, Mozilla, the project, itself also do many exciting innovations … like XUL
“You are right about the issue with rewriting the communicator from scratch.”
Actually, he’s not right.
(a) Most of the developers that had worked
on the old Communicator worked on the OS
version too. Until recently the majority of
them worked for Netscape. So, his point, that
Open Sourcing Communicator had no value, since
it wasn’t its code that was used doesn’t hold.
Open Sourcing Communicator HAD value, EVEN if
it wasn’t the actual code used. It HAD value
because it changed the working process for the
next version (Mozilla).
Remember that the Open Sourcing decision from NS
was two-fold: (1) The code for Communicator would
be Open Sourced (2) The next communicator version
(mozilla) would be created as Open Source.
(b) They actually kept a few parts of the old code-
base.
Java can be open source, but the license must not be GPL or BSD or MIT style. It needs its own protective license to prevent forking. Furthermore, Java is a wonderful thing. It needs to be community driven so it dosent become incompatible and slow and what not. Btw, you complain about the speed of java? It’s fast. It’s loading the program is whats slow- and if you have followed the JVM for the past 2 years… Its getting faster and faster and faster.
Sun and IBM can screw java over if they simply choose the wrong Open source License.
Besides, Sun could cut its workforce if they open sourced java
Thanks IBM!
Go Java!
Yes, but that would not have ben possible if those developers didn´t have Netscape sources at hand to give them the right ideas on how to make a good engine. Look at Swing, no OSS java implementation dares to make a complete rewrite of such a large library. How ease would it be if they had the sources to look at? They could make the best Swing implementation on earth too, but it would be thanks to that.
> It needs its own protective license
That’s how it is now…
> but the license must not be GPL or BSD or MIT style.
Why do you insist that it needs a “protective license” to prevent forking? AFAIK Sun has trademarks on Java, so you couldn’t even call your fork “Java”.
I’d think they should release it under the GPL with library exception (like classpath.org). That way Sun’s competition can’t create proprietary competetive products based on the released Java code, but you will still be able to use any license you want for your Java code.
As for the standardization issues, I think it’d be best if Sun would only let VMs/JREs be called Java (Sun has trademarks on that after all) if they pass Sun’s certification.
> Sun and IBM can screw java over if they simply choose the wrong Open source License.
Yes, if they choose a BSD-style license then we will see some company releasing that with enhancements soon and Sun would be out of the game.
The main thing Sun has tried to avoid is a Microsoft embrace and extend. Sun doesn’t make a ton of money on Java directly. Hell, they spend a lot on it, as far as I can tell. Java must be compliant to some sort of standards on each platform it is ported to. If you can do that within an OSS paradigm, fine. If you can’t, let’s not do it. All in all, Sun has done a very good job and should be applauded. Hopefully, they will make the right choices regarding the future of Java.
I remember that used to be the slogan a long long time ago for Java, but it never really materialized. Can I run Java natively on say FreeBSD/Alpha? I don’t know. I might, but the last time I tried to install native Java on FreeBSD it was pain in the ass. I admit, that was a very long time ago.
Although, I believe that opening up Java would make this compile once and run everywhere more possible. Why? Because Java is tightly controlled by Sun. Sun isn’t very open to accepting patches especially if those patches are made so that Java compiles and runs more easily on other Unix operating systems. Why would they? That would eat into their OS market share. They want you to buy Solaris and Sparc machines in order to deploy Java apps. Right? Otherwise, what buisness model would they have.
If Java is made open then it would be easier to port and distribute that software freely. Again, that’s another thing that Sun had tight control over. You couldn’t distribute Java unless you had a license to do so.
I don’t know if opening up Java will hurt them in some sort of way financially, but it would help developers I think. Also, it would definately make that compiling once, and run anywhere more of a reality – at least in theory.
I just wonder what reprocussions this would have on Sun’s business model. If everyone can run Java, then people would buy cheaper machines to deploy Java apps. That might hurt Sun. Then again, Sun can focus on really good Java software such as IDE’s stuff like that. Basically, the middleware type of stuff. I think they can make money there.
Anyway, that’s my take.
> Yes I have seen it. To be accurate, as of today, there are no bugs with 1000s of votes.
Oops, those were RFEs, sorry.
But do take a look at this one:
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4519482.html
It’s been > 2 years now, all to make a class public. There’s more like these, bugs which could be fixed with a simple, obvious and correct patch.
> but it does leave the claims that Sun negleting bugs and OSS patches would cure Java’s “problems” open to some weary eyed skepticism.
Well, neglect is a strong word. I think the problem is more fundamental – they don’t have enough developers working on it. Accept patches from outside, and the number of developers and testers increases by orders of magnitude.
Still skeptic?
If you want to see the source in Java, just unzip the jar and decompile the class file.
Then you can peruse the source all you want!
> Then you can peruse the source all you want!
Yes, under Sun’s EULA. That one’s so restrictive that “mere aggregation” with competetive products isn’t even allowed…
First Sun does take advice and code from 3rd parties (look at Apple and the shared JVM).
2nd, Sun’s biggest concern over open sourcing java is that it would give M$ the opportunity to take, modify, and release a strict M$ brand of Java that would hinder and hurt the rest of the Java community.
I do think they should work heavily with IBM on taking Java to the next level, but it should be done within the confines of a business partnership and not open source.
Last I checked, Java *WAS* open source. It’s not free for one to modify or redistribute, but I do have clear recolections of a jar file distributed by Sun with the Java source code. It came with the JDK.
Unless you’re all refering to things like the JVM… I only recall seeing java source files…
Hi
“Last I checked, Java *WAS* open source. It’s not free for one to modify or redistribute, but I do have clear recolections of a jar file distributed by Sun with the Java source code. It came with the JDK”
go read the open source definition. its not open souce unless it meets the criteria. mere aggregation and restrictive licensing combined with availability of source is not open source at all
Thanks for your reply. You made my day. You also made my point, and again, thank you.
The point being, that the end user has the opportunity to be part of the software development process: I for my own have seen a lot of problems within the Open Source and Free Software movement and not everything we get and deal with every day is a mature solution or from best wisdom. Which is to be expected – your own particular working environment will have certain requirements that can’t be precisely matched by others, let alone by that of the original software developer.
So you have the opportunity to enlighten the particular developer through your bug reports, bug fixes – if you’re good enough – and general feedback.
To say the truth I do see a lot of shit being developed even these days. Which is to be expected. What should also be expected, if you are in company that has taken on the use of Free/Libre Open Source Software, is that you also are willing to take part in the process, even if all you want is to have your particular bugset dealt to. And that can be done by the simple process of accurately reporting the bugs.
“its not open souce unless it meets the criteria”
Another brainwashed GNU zealot. Open source in it’s purest form means the availability of the source code, and to hell with the “Open Source Definition.” That’s comparable to calling GNU “free software” despite being one of the most retrictive licenses in the OSS world.
The Java source code that I saw is open source, but it’s not freely modifyible or redistributible. The FOSS world really lacks the proper words to decribe their wares, as “Free Software” just isn’t that good of a description, as it breeds confusion in lesser minds such as yours, Anonymous (IP: 61.95.184.—).
We really need to be clear on the nature of these things without relying on great synthetic constructs like the OSD to clarify what we’re about. Open Source is not synonymous with free software, and free software is not synonymous with open source, yet what we (the FOSS community) really want here is something that’s both, and we lack the terms to describe it elegantly.