James Gosling for CMP.net.Asia: “When people talk about opening the Java platform, they want to take the source code, remove the licences, and let everyone do what they want with it. But that really refers to people who work on the Java platform itself. We try to make Java as open as [possible] while still preserving the interoperability of Java for the large developer community. One way to look at it is, either we annoy the people who build the platforms or those who build the applications.” In the meantime, GNU Classpath 0.09 was released.
Father of Java Defends the Language
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http://www.peakpeak.com/~tromey/blog/2004/05/01#free-java4
exactly. This guy made it. Sun has it and should do what they want. LAY OFF IBM(Who’s trying to kill SunSoft) and Radical Open Source People!
hi
i posted a very good reply by one of those guys from the classpath project and its under review now
who is being radical here?
what about sun considering gpl’ing solaris and java. doesnt it make them part of the open source people
what about openoffice and jds?
isnt that open source?
I thing there is one point that he does not stress enough. Open source developers would have no point in writing a different and completly incompatible forked java implementation for the same reason that you dont see a forked perl/python/ruby implementation (though you could say ruby is too young). Even though it is completly possible, there is just no point. If it is something that is really powerful, it usually will get included, or there will be patches that will follow the main version pretty closely (like Stackless Python, or a library fo rthe language), if its an actual inconsistancy in the language (or whatever) then either it will be popular and accepted, or it will usually die off.
There are very rare cases in OSS where there was a true fork which brough out inconsistancies between the two.
Another thing, before anyone says so (probably too late), java is NOT free ‘enough’. It is currently illeagel for linux distros to ship with the JDK/JVM, its not that they dont ship it because of some so-called GPL zealotry (which is, I am assuming, that BSD dosn’t ship with it as well, right?)
It’s not _illegal_ to ship the runtime. First of all, some distros do ship with the java runtime. Suse, I believe, is one of them. I can’t comment on the JDK, but I believe the problem with distributing the runtime is that you must indemify Sun when you distribute it, which leads to costs and a bunch of legal complications for many distros. The JDK might have the same problem.
Java run time or whatever is aviable for FreeBSD… don’t think any of the other BSDs have it as of currently…
And it should be for linux too…
The question is not if there are packages avaliable. It is wheather it is legally possible for distributions (BSD and Linux) to ship with a copy of Sun’s JDK/JVM/JRE…
Btw, with regards to java’s stock packages, you might want to take a lookg here: http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4680244.html
(need to register)
They are really broken (in terms of where they put thier files, etc…) and have been for more then 2 years, yet Sun has shown no interest in fixing it.
jpackage.org have not been able to create RPMs that fix this due to it being illegal (you can check thier FAQ).
Btw, I have just browsed through the JDK’s license, and I saw this(pasting only a part that is relevant, but is probably too big anyhow):
C.License to Distribute Redistributables. Subject to the
terms and conditions of this Agreement, including but not
limited to the Java Technology Restrictions of these
Supplemental Terms, Sun grants you a non-exclusive,
non-transferable, limited license without fees to reproduce
and distribute those files specifically identified as
redistributable in the Software “README” file
(“Redistributables”) provided that: (i) you distribute the
Redistributables complete and unmodified (unless otherwise
specified in the applicable README file), and only bundled
as part of Programs, (ii) you do not distribute additional
software intended to supersede any component(s) of the
Redistributables (unless otherwise specified in the
applicable README file), (iii) you do not remove or alter
any proprietary legends or notices contained in or on the
Redistributables, (iv) you only distribute the
Redistributables pursuant to a license agreement that
protects Sun’s interests consistent with the terms
contained in the Agreement, (v) you agree to defend and
indemnify Sun and its licensors from and against any
damages, costs, liabilities, settlement amounts and/or
expenses (including attorneys’ fees) incurred in connection
with any claim, lawsuit or action by any third party that
arises or results from the use or distribution of any and
all Programs and/or Software.
That second part seems to suggest that you cannot ship something like gcj+classpath in a distro in addition to the JDK (What does that readme file mean? The redme file that sun distributs or one that f.e. RH can add?). I am not a lawyer, though, so I might be wrong. It would be nice if someone could give some more concrete answers with the proof to back it up…
< Anonymous >
Open source developers would have no point in writing a different and completly incompatible forked java implementation for the same reason that you dont see a forked perl/python/ruby implementation…Even though it is completly possible, there is just no point.
</Anonymous>
First, if there is no point in or possiblity of forking, then why bother GPL/Apache/BSDing Java? (since we can already see the source code)
Second, it is the Java PLATFORM that IBM, Raymond, and FOSS zealots wish Sun to “open” (whatever that means). Yes, perl, python, and ruby have not been forked, but these are _languages_. Forking an open sourced PLATFORM is much more common (Linux, BSD, XFree86, etc).
< Anonymous >
Another thing, before anyone says so (probably too late), java is NOT free ‘enough’.
</Anonymous>
I could not DISagree more.
I forgot to add, that it seems that you specifically have to make the user to ‘click through’ the license, which makes it difficult for most types of packaging (most package management frameworks specifically want to allow a no-interaction-needed framework,. Imagine someone having an update command as a cron job, and it gets stuck because the user was supposed to hit y<enter> but he couldn’t because the output was redirected to /dev/null!)
First, if there is no point in or possiblity of forking, then why bother GPL/Apache/BSDing Java? (since we can already see the source code)
I can see the jdk source code? Weird, I havn’t been able to.
1) To allow the open source community to fully embrace Java. Now it can’t due to licensing issues and idealogical issues. Now you might not agree with the idealogy of FLOSS, but for the people that do, having big dependencies ona non-free Java (like the big GNOME debate earlier) is problematic. After all, if these developers wouldn’t hold on these idealogical they wouldn’t of created FLOSS software in the first place. This FLOSS buy in could give Java the leverage it needs to fight .NET
With regards to the legal issues, I posted some thing above, but I just now found a link with more concrete information:
http://log.ometer.com/2004-04.html#13
(specifically, read the first few lines of the post, by Havoc Pennington)
2) To improve and hlep fix bugs. Up until recently Sun’s JVM on linux was horrendous, which was one of the reasons of the popularity of IBM’s JVM and Blackdown were so popular on linux. Also, a relativly recent linux kernel feature (NTPL Threading) broke some serious things in java with its use of POSIX threads. Last, there are quite a number of platforms (both in terms of the underlying OS, and the underlying CPU architecture) that currently Sun dosn’t support.
All of these things would be easily solvable if the JDM was open…
Second, it is the Java PLATFORM that IBM, Raymond, and FOSS zealots wish Sun to “open” (whatever that means). Yes, perl, python, and ruby have not been forked, but these are _languages_. Forking an open sourced PLATFORM is much more common (Linux, BSD, XFree86, etc).
First, “open” means making the source accessible to everyone to see, whichever license they pick is a different argument (Though I dont think the BSD one would be good for them, while one simmilar to the LGPL would probably be better)
So you are saying that perl/python/ruby do not have thier own built in class libraries? Or that for some reason they are not considered a platform? True, most of them range far less then the JDK. I think it would be mroe then enough if java only opened a subset of the JDK (like Threading, I/O, Networking, and other basics) which are covered by the ‘internal’ class libraries of Python and so forth.
I won’t learn or use Java until it is released under the GPL or a similar license that I agree with like Perl’s Artistic license. I see no point in learning a language that some corporation has control over. If Java complied with an open java standard controlled by a community of developers working for the technology, not the money, then things would be different. But I just don’t trust corporations like Sun for what should now be fairly obvious reasons, funding SCO, confusing PR surrounding licenses and the GNU community in general, etc.
Besides I got plenty of open languages to learn. Enough to keep me busy for many years to come. Maybe by then Sun will get it. Who knows.
1) No distro is going to bundle java and java apps together as a platform unless sun has a open source license on java. what it would mean for sun is that there would a tremendous increase of deployment of java apps because everybody knows java would be there with linux. the situation would become similar to perl or php in linux. this is a very big advantage
2) the distinction between the java platform and language is pretty blurred. open source devels have never created any forks of qt,gtk,perl,python,php,c,c++ or any major relevant language that has a significant fork. there is no reason they would WANT to fork java. its basically unnecessary and will throw out cross platform compatibility. that would be a insane thing to try.
3) sun holds the java trademark and it can be enforced such that anything that didnt pass out specific tests would not be called java at all. similar to what redhat does with its trademark
4) sun can license it as lgpl so that any modifications wouldnt result in a proprietary fork. Microsoft wont even touch it with a lgpl license
Sun can argue all it wants but the above are simple facts
I’m building a corporate-desktop Linux distro around these open languages: OCAML, Perl, C/C++, assembly, etc and probably even Ruby and Mono. If Java isn’t included on every OS by default then its merely an accessory. Nothing like C. UNIX etc?
Get it?
I didn’t think so.
I won’t learn or use Java until it is released under the GPL or a similar license that I agree with like Perl’s Artistic license. I see no point in learning a language that some corporation has control over.
I guess that minor part of the developer community (hobby devs?) who get scared of something which isn’t based on a communistic philosophy isn’t in Suns target group anyway.
I think it’s good that some company have actually understood that everything doesn’t have to be GPL, especially since many companies have moved into a position where they have policies against that license, like mine for instance.
As long as Sun keep providing goodies I don’t see any problem here…
Sun thinks it has won some kind of war with Microsoft – ha! The truth is that this is the loss of a small battle from Microsoft’s perspective. With .NET framework clones being completed as fast as , if not faster than, Java Classpath, Sun ought to wake up and focus on capturing the hearts and minds of developers. Why? Because Microsoft is winning developers over with .NET, VS.NET, and Longhorn.
“When people talk about opening the Java platform, they want to take the source code, remove the licences, and let everyone do what they want with it.”
What he says is the following, restated:
“Everyone who is talking that Java should be opened, wants to have the [Sun] Java source code in Public Domain, then steal it, to do everything they want with it”
Ridiculous, isn’t it? The latest part is probably not what he intended to say, but it is how i read it. The license part though, is more than obvious, and wrong. I’ve never read that _anyone_ said such. For example, i’ve always understood how ie. MS or IBM could embrace & extend a BSD licensed Java implementation.
What [most] people want is an open-source / free-software Java implementation but for different reasons. Because of the latter, the preference for license differs much, but nobody said that it should be unlicensed (PD), [most] people would have asked for a relicense/dual license. Which sounds far less scary than unlicense.
What Sun wants is control over the Java standard, and uniformity. Forced uniformity and Freedom [to improve Java] do not interact very well and thus the story ends. Unless either side restates their vision.
In the meanwhile, do not fall in the Java trap, and please do read the horrible license if you haven’t yet. It is one of the reasons why one would argument for a difference. Thanks Anonymous!
IBM’s real goal is to drive the cost of software to zero. This way businesses have more money to spend on hardware. They only want to leverage Sun’s hard work on Java to achieve that aim. If the IBM folks are such OSS advocates all of a sudden, why don’t they open-source DB2 then?
“1) No distro is going to bundle java ”
There are plenty of linux distros that include java, like red hat. you can also get java for alot of the other ones.
Exactly how do you steal GPL code? Even if there is a fork
all of those forks are available for merging. Under a real
open licience the likes of Microsoft would be wasting their time pulling a fork. Surely it was under Sun’s own
licience that Microsoft pulled their swifty with C#. Some
may have noticed that even big wrigglers like Cisco get
dragged out from under their rocks eventually.
“Everyone who is talking that Java should be opened, wants to have the [Sun] Java source code in Public Domain, then steal it, to do everything they want with it”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Per difinition, you can’t steal IP which is in the public domain. This makes no sense.
I can see the jdk source code? Weird, I havn’t been able to.
Yes you can. A quick search on Google for “JDK source code” brings up the following page. http://java.sun.com/developer/products/java2cs/
1)To allow the open source community to fully embrace Java.
I don’t know what you mena by fully embrace, but there seem to be a lot of OSS projects hosted on Sourceforge that make use of Java. Looks like there are many in hte OSS community who don’t really care about how ‘open’ Java is.
2) To improve and hlep fix bugs.
You can view the source, fix bugs you find. Only difference is, instead of distributing your own patches, you have to send them back to Sun, so that it gets integrated into the standard JDK release. This is a much better solution than having hundreds of independent developers publishing patches of their own.
when JAVA will open totally [because MS will have prevail in the MS platform for SURE! with C# XAML AVALON etc]
then SUN will forget all this, and throw JAVAVM as an open one. Anyways, JAVA is already behind comparing with C# 2.0
funny! i have not seen red hat bundled with Java. If you are talking open source implementation of java, it may be possible but not one from SUN. And one more thing, red hat is one of the purest distros in it’s licensing terms. It even does not include mp3 plugin for xmms. do I need to say more why they would not include Java?
Mandrake distributes the JRE in the distro too.
i have not used Mandrake. So can not say that.
I have installed Red Hat for long enough now. Dont knw may be I may have missed it or not seen it. I had to install JRE everytime from sun’s website
Once I discussed about this problem, open sourcing Java, in another thread and a guy said that Sun should open Java as IBM opened SQL, SGML, and …
And I said SQL is a good example and that clearly shows why Sun doesn’t like to open Java: No two SQL implementations are compatible. Applying that Java: No two Java implementations will be compatible.
So Sun: never ever open Java the way IBM wants you to! If you someday found a solution that could protect the language from incompatibilities, then just do it!
Boy, am I glad that I put together this “Open Source Java FAQ”
@ http://jroller.com/page/murphee/20040426 , so I can
post it in discussions like this; whatever reason you
have against Open Sourcing Java, I suppose this list contains
an answer to that.
And I said SQL is a good example
Yes, its a good example. But your inference is wrong.
SQL is like HTML, JavaScript, etc an standard and not a program.
And so, the programs who implements this standards are doing it different and support this standard more or less well.
But Java is at the beginning a program – not a standard.
And so the rules are different.
You can liken Java with Mozilla, OpenOffice and so on.
How much different forks of Mozilla do you have seen?
All “forks” use the Gecko-engine. But how much forks of the gecko-engine do you have seen? No forks? I have personally don’t seen one.
How much different forks of OpenOffice do you have seen?
Ok, there existing little attempts, to use other icons and integrate it more in the desktop, but there existing nor “really” forks. All different code-parts are integrated in the OpenOffice-tree.
Now to Java. Java isn’t OpenSource. And there existing efforts to have one. So, at the moment there existing gcj, kaffe and other Java-clones, which try to reimplement Java.
ANd like PHP, HTML and so on, they are a little bit different to Suns Java.
But for some platforms (BeOS, Syllable, etc) existing only OpenSource-Javas, because it is easier to port OpenSource-Javas, then porting a closed Source-Java, where it is not allowd to share intermediate steps with other developers and the whole community.
So, that we have now so much Java-implementations (kaffe, gcj, kissme, sablevm, etc.) is a resualt of it, that Sun is ClosedSource.
The same is with SWT. SWT looks more like the native-widgets. But in first place it is OpenSource!
I think, if Suns Java was at the beginning OpenSource, SWT never comes out.
“There are plenty of linux distros that include java, like red hat. you can also get java for alot of the other ones.”
if you had read completely i said java as a platform with java apps along with the distro.
Nobody whined when Microsoft didn’t release the source code to their high-performance CLR. Instead, two groups decided to make their own implementations. What’s the big deal if Sun doesn’t want to open the source to their implementation of Java? It’s not their fault that the groups working on open source implementations are slow.
<italics>
“Nobody whined when Microsoft didn’t release the source code to their high-performance CLR. Instead, two groups decided to make their own implementations.”
</italics>
hehe.
I could not agree more.
GNU Classpath 0.09 (Default) by Mark Wielaard – Thursday, September 3rd 1998 23:49 PST
So Classpath 0.09 was just released? Wow, it’s the ’90s all over again.
Another reason for making JAVA open source is that Sun can’t be bothered to make versions of J2SE for all platforms, only the major ones. If you want JAVA for the Amiga, you have to make do with Kaffe + Classpath instead of an actual J2SE. This means that some stuff (a lot?) doesn’t work, which means you are now artificially promoting certain platforms through your support of who gets JAVA and who doesn’t.
While SUN won’t bother with an Amiga or SkyOS version of JAVA, someone else in the community will. Even if SUN kept control over the JAVA code like they do OpenOffice, this would still allow alternate platforms to finally be supported.
It would be trivial for Microsoft to build their own version that is slightly incompatible with mainstream Java but with all sorts of neat (ie useless) features thrown in to amuse the masses. After a few iterations moving toward .NET, they would have enough of a case for asking for that last small set of changes that brings Java developers over to .NET completely. It would be the ultimate irony, if, after all these years in court, and after they have finally settled the suits, that Sun goes ahead and gives away control of Java.
SUN, PLEASE, DO NOT OPEN SOURCE JAVA!
All you people complaining about not having a GPL Java can whine all you want. Sun does not care as they do not get business from you. Sun gets business from other large corporations, THAT is their target.
Sun’s target audience, the one that brings in money, does not care about a GPL java, therefore it will never happen. I know many of you think the world revolves around your little philisophical kingdom, but the reality is that the most of the world revolves around manking money. The sooner you realize that the sooner you can stop wasting your time whinging about things like this.
I agree.
I have too many open languages to learn as it is.
Java developer for about 5 years now. I don’t think forking what we have now is a good idea.But this is just me. I don’t know if there will be different API’s for say, Amiga and Windows if they decide to GPL source code.That won’t be too good IMHO.
Hehe, I tend to agree with you regarding the GPL fanboys. They’re pretty much irrelevant.
However,
(1)Right now it’s a pain to ship the JDK/JRE in distros because the indeminify clause in the license. They should modify it to make it more distro friendly.
(2)Sun should work with the Gnome foundation to allay any fears in having java as a dependency in Gnome or as recent Gnome people have pointed out, they’ll probably have to go with some “half-baked” measures. Gnome people are probably being paranoid, but since Sun has already invested a lot in Gnome I’m not too sure exactly what is going on here. Looks like some channels of communications need to be opened up. And if mono turns out to be RAND + Royalty free then that’s just more pressure to adopt Mono as an official Gnome runtime.
(3)Many enterprise java developers I know wish they could use the language c# with the breadth and maturity of libraries that java offers. C# just seems to be a better language. Sun can’t afford to be as stagnant as they were in the past with .NET giving them some heavy competition in the managed world.
(4)And to address your main issue, Sun will never recoup the development costs that they’ve incurred over the years developing java no matter how many J2EE licenses they sell. McNealy was wrong back in ’96, ’97 when he thought everything would be thin clients running java and Solaris servers running the back end.
Forget about gpl. gpl is bullshit for many things, especially for things like libraries. Sun can come up with their own license that is open source compatible.
Also, I dont’ worry about forking because as history has shown us, just because someone has the code doesn’t mean they’ll produce anything of quality. The cream always rises to the top and there will end up being a defacto standard.
All you people complaining about not having a GPL Java can whine all you want. Sun does not care as they do not get business from you. Sun gets business from other large corporations, THAT is their target.
Sun is shooting themselves in the foot. No one is going to use Java if no one develops software with Java. The developers want an open source Java. They want to make needed changes in Java. They know what they want from Java and they are the best people to implement it. They know that if MS wins with .NET, Sun, and Java will disappear. Who wants to code in a language that will be dead in a few years?
Sun’s target audience, the one that brings in money, does not care about a GPL java, therefore it will never happen. I know many of you think the world revolves around your little philisophical kingdom, but the reality is that the most of the world revolves around manking money. The sooner you realize that the sooner you can stop wasting your time whinging about things like this.
Despite what you believe, this has little to do with philosphy and has more too do with pragmatism. The community is interested in improving Java and keeping MS from standardizing .NET, thus destroying Java. Who, other than MS themselves, want that to happen? The rest of us will be stuck with non-standard, non-portable code that we’ll have to reverse engineer to interoperate with.
Sun is shooting themselves in the foot. No one is going to use Java if no one develops software with Java. The developers want an open source Java. They want to make needed changes in Java. They know what they want from Java and they are the best people to implement it. They know that if MS wins with .NET, Sun, and Java will disappear. Who wants to code in a language that will be dead in a few years?
Java has never been open sourced. Yet, that hasn’t stopped its adoption. Not all developers want an Open sourced Java. In fact, most developers couldn’t care less about whether Java were open sourced or not. Just take a look on sourceforge. There are a lot of open sourced projects that use Java, even though the JVM isn’t open sourced.
How will developers making their own changes and publishing them benefit anybody? You’ll end up with JVMs that are running different patches, and you effectively get different ‘versions’ of Java. Right now, if developers want something changed in Java, they can modify the source for the JVM and submit the changes back to Sun for them to integrate it into the official JVM. IMHO, that’s a much better way than what the OSS people are proposing.
“It would be trivial for Microsoft to build their own version that is slightly incompatible with mainstream Java but with all sorts of neat (ie useless) features thrown in to amuse the masses”
(They already did that with .NET)
Why would it be anymore trivial than it is currently? If they base it on the GPL version [MS doesn’t touch GPL with a 10 pole feel], then the changes are all open. If they don’t base it on it, it isn’t different than the current situation.
And MS is already licensed for their Java version anyway, who knows how (in)compatible it’ll be.
“Nobody whined when Microsoft didn’t release the source code to their high-performance CLR. Instead, two groups decided to make their own implementations.”
Currently there is a freely redistributable, largely cross-platform Java, with source code. With that available, there is not enough incentive for anyone to make an open source implementation. Why bother improving GCJ, when you can just download the Sun SDK? So nobody bothers. With Mono, if you are running Linux and want to use C#, you improve Mono.
Amusingly, if Sun closed the source code of Java, and made it run only on Solaris, then perhaps you’d find an open source implementation within the year.
This half-way house is foolish. I don’t mind and can’t stop Sun being foolish, but like good friends we should tell them that they are being. They have all but open sourced Java. By not going the last tiny distance, they are cutting their own throat.
Java, in its current form, has numerous incompatible, competing implementations. Kaffe, Sable, GJC + Classpath, etc, etc. In comparison, how many implementations of Python are there? Ruby? Perl? On the other hand, there are multiple implementations of C#, Scheme, etc. Size of the userbase can’t possibly be the reason — there are way more Python/Perl programmers than C# programmers or Scheme programmers on *NIX. The only logical conclusion is that open-sourcing would probably have no effect on forking, and might even have the effect of preventing forks that attempt to be free replacements.
Well people are talking as if java developers are dying to use C#. trust me none of the i know does. As a language C# just looks like a java clone , and have more clutter to learn (more commands, allowing abuse of language rules such as destructors -> evil). Enough C# fud.
JAva code is open, if anyone interested in, can check, and offer bug fixes, performance enhancements etc.. i am ok with the current licencing of java. And “all” of the libraries, applications and frameworks (at least 15 of them) we use in our current project are Open source. Most of the libraries has no match on .Net or its crippled copies (Starting with Hibernate and Lucene). what is wrong with people?
” The only logical conclusion is that open-sourcing would probably have no effect on forking, and might even have the effect of preventing forks that attempt to be free replacements.”
Crazy rant based on what I just read, yo:
I, ah, think the reason that Python, Ruby, Perl, etc, they don’t get forked, is because they don’t suck – you know, there are no oustanding library problems, no outstanding language problems that could be solved by a little tweaking here and there, y’know? Unlike Java, any problem with one of those languages is likely to be so big that you would just start another language, you know?
I’ve been told, by other developers, you know, that there are alot of little annoying things in Java; bugs that are never fixed in libraries, silly changes to the way “char” works, you know, niggles is what they’re saying, that they add up, I guess.
Like, ah, how long would it have taken for Java’s ‘fake generics’ to be implemented if the thing was open? I mean, it all compiles down to the same bytecode, it would’ve been a few hours, one patch to slap onto the compiler, and no end user would ever know the difference – or developers, either. But, still, it took a competitor to spurr Sun into action… obviously an issue that scratches the itch of some developers, if it was open, you know, don’t you think that someone would have done it long ago?
See, I think, people like Java; they like the concept, you know, they like the language, they just want to give it a 2004-style “tune-up” to make it suck a little less, rock a little more. I mean, they need a solid base to stand against .NET with, you know, what else is there that has mindshare like Java?
End crazy rant.
Despite what you believe, this has little to do with philosphy and has more too do with pragmatism. The community is interested in improving Java and keeping MS from standardizing .NET, thus destroying Java. Who, other than MS themselves, want that to happen? The rest of us will be stuck with non-standard, non-portable code that we’ll have to reverse engineer to interoperate with.
First off, C# is a better language than Java. They are very similar, but C# has fixed a lot of problems with Java (concurrency, true generics, etc). So I don’t really see why the community is interesting in somehow harming .NET standardization.
Second, there is absolutly nothing stopping the community from implementing an open source Java right now as they have with C# (mono). Sun will always have the Java brand, but the community can just call it Coffee or Gava or something and go change whatever they wish. Perl and python are both open source languages with no corporate backer, so I don’t see the problem with just forking a Java offshoot.If Sun want’s to support this offshoot officially, they may do so, or may not.
All this whining just sounds like the community wants Sun to release their Java code for free so the community doesn’t have to reimplement it. Sun has made it clear it’s not going to give handouts, so it’s time for the community to shut up about it and go do their own thing. Personally, I’d rather C# and .NET be adopted over Java, the architecture is just better. Hopefully some official statement of RAND + royalty free from MS will quiet most of the mono critics.
“Personally, I’d rather C# and .NET be adopted over Java, the architecture is just better. Hopefully some official statement of RAND + royalty free from MS will quiet most of the mono critics.”
No such thing will happen from MS and mono will continue to be on legally uncertain terms unless novell does the required legal work and publish them that with support
Well people are talking as if java developers are dying to use C#. trust me none of the i know does. As a language C# just looks like a java clone , and have more clutter to learn (more commands, allowing abuse of language rules such as destructors -> evil). Enough C# fud.
You’re probably talking to the people that got a gig doing java during the dotcom boom where if you could turn on a computer you got the job or some kid whose only experience has been java.
I’m talking about hardcore c++ coders that moved into java and that love the java libraries but feel that they dumbed-down c++ too much when they did java. Java 1.5 is fixing some of these problems, but not everything.
That is a problem. The prudent thing would for Novell lawyers to have some clarification of the legal issues surrounding RAND + Royalty free ecma 335 and 336 specs before Mono 1.0 comes out in late June.
Until that happens, you’ll have windows people doing their own thing and saying “hey, this is kindof cool that some of my binaries run out of the box on mono on linux”, but unix people probably won’t touch it with a 10-foot pole until the legal issues are cleared up. Especially people that are writing proprietary, commercial apps.
Right now, if developers want something changed in Java, they can modify the source for the JVM and submit the changes back to Sun for them to integrate it into the official JVM.
Will requests to make a JVM for another system even be heard? Probably not. Java has the potential to really be a write once, run anywhere platform but it can only get that way through open source.
Sun will always have the Java brand, but the community can just call it Coffee or Gava or something and go change whatever they wish. Perl and python are both open source languages with no corporate backer, so I don’t see the problem with just forking a Java offshoot.
So why is it now ok to fork Java when it wasn’t before?
Not all developers want an Open sourced Java. In fact, most developers couldn’t care less about whether Java were open sourced or not.
Real developers care. No one wants to code in a language that can disappear in the blink of an eye. Why waste time developing an application with a propietary language that comes from a sinking company? What do you do when Java is no more? A complete rewrite? That’s just not feasible for a real programmer.
Just take a look on sourceforge. There are a lot of open sourced projects that use Java, even though the JVM isn’t open sourced.
This is another one of those times that people refer to sourceforge like all the projects there are professional. They’re not. Most of the programs on sourceforge are not on anyone’s radar screen. They have no bearing on the acceptance of Java with large-scale application developers.
Java has never been open sourced. Yet, that hasn’t stopped its adoption.
Are you serious? For all that hype Java was a flop. It’s out there but it never even came close to its potential.
All this whining just sounds like the community wants Sun to release their Java code for free so the community doesn’t have to reimplement it.
No, it’s because the community doesn’t like forks. The community wants a truly cross platform language. Java can do that but without open sourcing it there will be no way to ensure that it will work across platforms. The OSS community doesn’t believe in reinventing the wheel. Why reimplement Java or create a new language when there is a perfectly good starting point? .NET is not truly cross platform, and can never be, therefor it is not a good starting point for the OSS community.
This is the explanation of C# is better: “well.. you know generics and concurrency etc.. C# better” wow. how technical explanation. use of generics are not implemented in both languages yet , and no matter how the background operation in terms of use of language there is no difference except syntax in using generics (to me generics is not a big deal anyway). People may think something seriously worong or buggy in java if they read those comments. Just remember, what enterprise companies, many high reliability systems are using most? java. period.
Oh, by the way, warn the ebay.com. maybe they are unaware of those apparent java flaws or weakneses. most people here makes a comparison of those technologies are not really java developers anyway. writing an applet in 1998 does not make anybody a java expert..
First of all, generics are implemented in both languages. The respective versions just haven’t been released yet.
For such a java advocate, you seem to be quite clueles when you say things like “there is no difference except syntax in using generics”.
There’s a big difference. Java’s version of generics is basically syntactic sugar. It’s still objects under the hood because java’s version of generics does type erasure, which also means that you can’t use reflection to rebuild a type. This also means that there is no performance boost because boxing into objects is still involved.
i guess i am not the only clueless.
– i know they are implemented but there is no release product now. my english may be the problem.
– No, you can use reflection. read the doc carefully.
http://www.jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/review/jsr014/index.h…
– And if you read my arguments, i said in terms of language usage, i didnt mention anything about the virtual machine issues, which also
a) can be improved anytime and i do not think in the real world applications performance improvment can be drastic.
b) java is fine with or without generics.
You linked to some JCP proposal from 2001 that is completely meaningless. Let’s get something straight. There will be no type reflection with generics in Java 1.5. Go look at some more recent docs reflecting 1.5 status as it is today. You will see that it’s all objects under the hood. Sun did not want to change the virtual machine and therefore a tradeoff was made. I’m not debating whether it is a good thing or not, I’m just pointing out your error that it’s just a difference of syntax.
This is an article where former Mark Fleury, one of the people who demanded that Java be open sourced two years ago has changed his stance. He thinks that Sun’s benevolent dictatorship is good for Java. Now lets not forget, he’s one of the authors of JBoss an open sourced J2EE platform.
Here’s the link to the article
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/04/30/HNfleury_1.html
The discussion is on Javalobby, where Java developers hang out.
http://www.javalobby.org/thread.jspa?forumID=61&threadID=12410