McNealy Answers: No Open Source Java

comforteagle writes "Sun CEO Scott McNealy has finally answered the long awaited question that has been on the minds of open source and Java developers. Will Sun open source Java? No. He stated today that Sun sees no solution solved from open sourcing Java that isn't already addressed."

Open Source is a verb?

When pressed about his decision, Scott McNealy admitted, "Well, we were going to open source Java until we realized that the phrase 'open source' is really more of a noun than a verb."

Re:Open Source is a verb?

In addition, Sun announced plans to implement Java in Java. The porting will be done by Sun's Java team using a Java IDE and Java compilers on thin-client boxes powered by Java. When asked if the Java-only restriction might be responsible for the estimated Fall of 2031 ship date, McNealy answered, "You are missing the point."

Re:Open Source is a verb?

Interesting that you keep getting more mod points for funny, even though, as earlier replies to you have pointed out, your joke is wrong by at least 33 years or so. Java on java has existed for years.

The porting will be done by Sun's Java team using a Java IDE and Java compilers on thin-client boxes powered by Java.

The fascinating thing is that these things all exist and are developing at a furious pace.

McNealy answered, "You are missing the point."

Well, a lot of people on Slashot seem to be missing McNealy's point, so I guess that makes things even. :-)

The source for Java is available for download. You are free to make a Java clone, as long as you don't call it Java (just like Microsoft has done with C#/.Net). You can join the Java Community Project and influence how Java is developed. Are the possible risks for Sun worth what little more Sun could gain by Open Sourcing it? Doubtful.

Re:Open Source is a verb?

Just another example of the verbitization of the English language.

"Googling" is another popular one.

"I was up all night Googling your mom."

Re:Open Source is a verb?

I couldn't find the pictures to go with it, but the text I've been able to glean from several Google hits goes something like this:

Calvin: "I like to verb words."

Hobbes: "What?"
Calvin: "I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when 'access' was a thing? Now it's something you do. It got verbed."
Calvin: "Verbing weirds language."
Hobbes: "Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding."

But the original quote, "Any noun can be verbed," is variously credited to either Edsger Dijkstra and Alan Perlis.

How can we fracture it?

If you don't open source it, how can we fork it?

But seriously folks...

God strike me down for saying it, but he's right. Java as a core language is fine. It's libraries are decent. What's more, it is infinitely extensible through the addition of third party libraries.

Why would you need an open source Java?

Re:How can we fracture it?

Why would you need an open source Java?

Because many distros will not ship non-free software by default. This greatly limits the usefulness of Java as a general development language for Linux applications. They are shooting themselves in the foot on this one.

Re:How can we fracture it?

Wouldn't you say that religious fervor is preventing those distros from realizing the benefits of a very good language?

Re:How can we fracture it?

Care to explain how Java's license that forbids distribution [debian.org] the fault of the distributor?

Re:How can we fracture it?

The license does not prohibit redistribution. Debian has just decided the license doesn't suit them is all. That's Debian's issue not Sun's.

For the record here are the re-distribution clauses from the 1.4.2_04JDK:

B. License to Distribute Software. 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 the Software, provided that (i) you distribute the Software complete and unmodified (unless otherwise specified in the applicable README file) and only bundled as part of, and for the sole purpose of running, your Programs, (ii) the Programs add significant and primary functionality to the Software, (iii) you do not distribute additional software intended to replace any component(s) of the Software (unless otherwise specified in the applicable README file), (iv) you do not remove or alter any proprietary legends or notices contained in the Software, (v) you only distribute the Software subject to a license agreement that protects Sun's interests consistent with the terms contained in this Agreement, and (vi) 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.

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.

Linux VPS hosting *with* Sun JVMs [rimuhosting.com]

Re:How can we fracture it?

(vi) 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, for instance, does not sound like a term that any distro would be particularily happy with (or, in the case of a community effort like Debian, even possible).

Re:How can we fracture it?

That's standard though.
Say someone got java, added a trojan into it's binary, and distributed it.

Sun doesn't want to be blamed for stuff like that, and just about any software licence will have a clause like that, along with a user-licence that says if they didn't get it directly from the company, The company forfits all liability.

Re:How can we fracture it?

Did you actually read it? People can sue Debian for faults they get when running their Sun implemented Java programs. That clause is revolting.

That's useless

distribute the Software complete and unmodified

I read this as SUN forbidding Debian to package their JVM in a Debian package.

do not distribute additional software intended to replace any component(s) of the Software

This would mean Debian wouldn't be allowed to ship with gcj, Jikes RVM, JRockit, Kaffe or whatever. To me it sounds quite unreasonable for SUN to want to be able to veto what can go into Debian.

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

So SUN wants Debian to pay their legal fees? Silly Debian for not wanting to do that.

To me these terms sound quite unreasonable, I know I wouldn't want to adhere to them if I could decide what went into Debian.

Re:How can we fracture it?

> Wouldn't you say that religious fervor is preventing those distros from realizing the benefits of a very good language?

*silence*

*the OSS judges confer for 10 minutes looking confused*

*cough*

Someone gets up and yells, "Burn the witch!!!"

Problem solved.

Re:How can we fracture it?

Not at all. I think what holds them back is the license.

Software is confidential and copyrighted. Title to Software and all associated intellectual property rights is retained by Sun and/or its licensors. Except as specifically authorized in any Supplemental License Terms, you may not make copies of Software, other than a single copy of Software for archival purposes.

Re:How can we fracture it?

Because many distros will not ship non-free software by default. This greatly limits the usefulness of Java as a general development language for Linux applications.

Doesn't that say more about Linux than it does about Sun?

Re:How can we fracture it?

Actually this would not be a problem only with Linux, but even across other operating systems.

Like I indicated in another post, there is nothing to stop Microsoft from having their own "windows-only" forked version of Java. And nothing to stop from the GNU/Debian crowd to have their own "puritanical" version. And nothing to stop from IBM to have their own "enterprise-ready" version of Java.

If you notice, even in case of Linux, Linus and a handful of others actually maintain the core kernel code. In case of language, it would be difficult to have this kind of a central point of control - the forking would be really hard to control, and would only lead to more confusion and more complexity, not to mention serious incompatibility issues - all of which flies against the very principles that Java has been built on.

Given that, why aren't linux and perl fractured?

If sun followed the linux model - and key engineers at sun reviewed each change and made sure that it was ok to add to the release, and followed through everything openly, then it would work.

Your argument doesn't hold water. Where are all the forks of linux? Just because its a language does not mean it will fork and fracture. Perl isn't forked to hell. Nor is python. Nor are many open source languages.

If sun truly believed in open source (and I don't believe they do), then this would be a great step forward for them.

And McNealy's challenge to IBM to open source db2 is silly too; sun makes no money from selling java licenses (duh, they're free), where as IBM does make money from db2.

Re:Given that, why aren't linux and perl fractured

You forget the fact that companies that have vested interests in killing Java *cough* a certain Seattle based company *cough* could use this against Java.

I'm NOT starting a flame war here - but Microsoft does not really consider Perl or Python to be a serious contender as Java.

What do you think really inspired Visual Studio .Net? Microsoft has everything to gain by killing it - it would only more people to use their platform.

Right now, Java gives people the freedom of platform - if in any way killing it or changing it in a way that makes it beneficial to MSFT, they WILL do it.

Re:Given that, why aren't linux and perl fractured

"And McNealy's challenge to IBM to open source db2 is silly too; sun makes no money from selling java licenses (duh, they're free), where as IBM does make money from db2."

Sun does make money from Java. They license certification tools so that people can claim 100% Pure Java Certified and use the java logo. They make money from licensing the source code, they make money from licensing distribution rights for the JRE and JDK.

While you can distribute the JRE, you can only do so if you aren distributing it for the purpose of running your application.

You cannot distribute the JDK unless you pay for that right.

Re:How can we fracture it?

Let's say there was a fork, Sun holds the trademark to the Java name so said fork could not promote itself as "Java." If it did, it would have a lawsuit on its hands that is a guaranteed loss.

If it forked, it would become some other language, and people could decide to use it or not based on its merits. However, those in the Java camp would know where to look for the Java they want.

Furthermore, example proves this point. We have languages like Perl, Python, Ruby and countless others that are doing just fine in the open source world.

Re:How can we fracture it?

"Because many distros will not ship non-free software by default. This greatly limits the usefulness of Java as a general development language for Linux applications. They are shooting themselves in the foot on this one."

Is that Sun's problem or the Distro's problem?

Someone who doesn't know enough to install the JDK on their computer on their own from a package that is already included in their distro (just not in the 'free' section) probably wouldn't be able to develop in it. If you like java, you can install it, you can use it.

Maybe the linux distributors should be a little more open regarding what programs they would like to include.

Look at sourceforge. The number of open source projects written with java is huge.

It's not sun that's going to lose out by not open sourcing java. I'm not trying to sound negative. People are deploying java apps on linux all the time. Especially web applications.

It seems like the OS community wants sun to do it out of principle. None of the arguments made really hold up in my opinion.

Re:How can we fracture it?

Java programs larger than "Hello World" have about a 25% chance of running on a default Linux system.

Personally, I think that sentence makes your post deserving of -1 Flamebait. The reason Java programs fail to run on a Linux system is that they were written by idiots who assume that

new File("c:\\");

will work on any machine. I've only had one serious issue with getting Java programs to run on Windows, OS X and Linux, and that is that there's no documented way of changing the default file encoding. I added an item to coding standards saying that file encodings must be specified for all file I/O and the problem went away. The GUI will also want testing to make sure it looks reasonable, but that's not a failure-to-run issue.

Re:How can we fracture it?

Because many distros will not ship [Jave because it it] non-free software by default. They are shooting themselves in the foot on this one.

They refers to the distros that are so caught up in the OSS religion that they won't ship a useful and decent free (as in beer) language because it's not fee (as in liberty), right?

Re:How can we fracture it?

"they" are almost every distro out there. And "they" do not include Java for pretty good, license-related reasons.

And no, this is Sun:s problem, not the distributions. A good deal of people that would have been using Java for their applications are instead happily using Python, Perl, C/C++ or, rarely but increasingly often,even Mono/C# for their development. Those people were Sun's to loose, and they did.

Right now we have the situation that even Sun is doing all their GNOME contributions in C/C++, as Java is not acceptable as part of the core desktop at this time (neither is Mono/C#, of course - no need to start a flamewar here). In fact, we will likely see Python (and maybe Perl) accepted as core technologies for the desktop (for both GNOME and KDE) long before we see Java - and by then, it may be too late for Java no matter what happens. Of course, that is a problem for Sun (and for dedicated Java developers), not for the distros or for the general user/developer population.

Re:How can we fracture it?

You've never had to write code that compiles under multiple compilers for multiple platforms, have you?

One of the driving forces behind Java's evolution was the fragmentation of the C++ camp.

Re:How can we fracture it?

I also question the benefit to open source java. Microsoft Java? Maybe, but they built C# because Sun took them to task for violating their license, and creating a "write once, run on Microsoft" version. I don't really see any compelling arguments for making it open source. IBM, BlackBerry, and other java SDKs without an open source license, and there is a community process for submitting changes to the specs.

"Go open source with DB2 and then you can tell me what to do with my assets," was McNealy's response to IBM.

Hmmm... Now there's an idea I could get behind. Maybe. Although I'm not sure how much a database product would benefit from community involvement. IBM has already ported it to just about everything. The free (as in beer) aspect would probably kill off Oracle and SQL Server pretty quick, though.

Re:How can we fracture it?

I also question the benefit to open source java. Microsoft Java? Maybe, but they built C# because Sun took them to task for violating their license, and creating a "write once, run on Microsoft" version. I don't really see any compelling arguments for making it open source. IBM, BlackBerry, and other java SDKs without an open source license, and there is a community process for submitting changes to the specs.

It's not just about specs. Implementations matter. If Sun's reference implementation isn't open source, the language isn't really free.

I can understand Sun's initial reluctance to open-source Java years ago -- Microsoft would have (probably successfully) embraced and extended Java, as they indeed tried to do. At the time, the closed license was beneficial.

Here's the compelling reason for Sun to open-source Java now -- Microsoft no longer has an incentive to embrace and extend Java. They've done an end-run around the Java license by reimplementing a virtually identical language and calling it C# instead of Java. Microsoft will keep pushing C# over Java, and they're already successfully stealing away significant mindshare from Java. Microsoft has proven their ability to (illegally) leverage their monopoly position to acquire new markets. I hate to say it, but in the battle of C# vs. Java, the smart money is probably on C# unless something changes.

Making the Sun reference implementation completely open-source would change the rules of the game. Microsoft might try to subvert it again, but there really wouldn't be any point; C# does the job equally well. More importantly, the rest of the industry would embrace Java even more than it already has, and it could serve to steal mindshare back from C# despite Microsoft's monopoly advantage. This is a compelling reason to do it.

"Go open source with DB2 and then you can tell me what to do with my assets," was McNealy's response to IBM.

I have no doubt this remark was sarcastic on McNealy's part, but suppose IBM takes it seriously? If IBM wants Java open-sourced badly enough, would they consider making DB2 open-source as a sort of trade? If IBM responded with an offer to enter into a contract at Sun for both Java and DB2 to be open-sourced together (and conditionally on each other), would McNealy take IBM up on the offer? Or would he just find a new excuse to refuse to relinquish control over the code?

It seems that Sun still hasn't learned their lesson from the NeWS debacle of the late 80s. While NeWS was clearly superior technology at the time, X11 was free in every sense. And it mattered. NeWS fans (including me) could see the writing on the wall, and complained that Sun should make NeWS as free as X11. ("Open Source" wasn't a term coined yet, of course.) Of course, Sun refused, and NeWS died a slow and terrible death at the hands of an inferior (but free) competitor. Even now, Sun shows little interest in making NeWS free, when its value as an "asset" is zero. Will Sun maintain a similar deathgrip on Java until it too lands in the dustbins of history, while the world settles on C# instead of Java, as with X11 and NeWS?

Sun, learn from your mistakes. There was a time when Java's license prevented abuse by Microsoft, but that time has passed. C# is Microsoft's new approach to "embrace and extend" Java, and the only effective way to counter it is to make Java fully open-source now, before C# inexorably crushes Java. The writing is on the wall yet again -- don't let Java die the same lingering death that NeWS suffered!