ESR's Open Letter to McNealy: Set Java Free! 671
yukster writes "Eric Raymond has posted an open letter to Sun Microsystem's Scott McNealy asking him to 'Let Java go.' He says Sun can 'have ubiquity or [it] can have control.' The excellent improvements made to Java in the upcoming 1.5 release help re-level the playing field with C#. But, it seems like if Sun really wants Java to rule the world, they should heed ESR's advice. Hey Mr. McNealy, listen to this guy... set Java free!"
Bull!!!! (Score:0, Interesting)
Should keep his big mouth shut. Sun has put a ton of effort into making Java what it is today and it's a great product.
Of course Java has issues but what doesn't.
Java came along in the mid nineties and it was obvious that this language was what C++ should have been all along.
What does ESR want Java to become? Another language driven by the whims of a few programmers (probably picking their nose and doing some sort of thesis on the side) who have no idea what corporate computing really demands.
When ESR can contribute something as good as Java to the programming community at large then I'll listen to anything he has to say.
What!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hello Mr. ESR, "freedom for freedom's sake?"
Yes they are pros, but they are cons also for every argument. Gaining friends? what are you talking about? Yes setting Java free would make java a little better or maybe a lot better, only time will tell. But can Sun afford to do it. And it is not that Sun is one crappy guy who is forcing Java on people. Java is not bad. it is kinda okay too. I agree with allowing linux distros to include Java, but setting it open source may be good for Open Source community, but certainly a very very bad move for sun. Maybe 5 years down the like if sun regains server market share, churns out a killer processor, be the server king again, then yes it may make sense to make some portions Open Source. But till then it got to hang on, and i guess it will.
Well, maybe they will listen to him (Score:5, Interesting)
I I posted it a few times [kuro5hin.org] maybe ESR read it?
Well, I am posting it last time now.
I would like to see GNU/Linux to become a more powerful platform and by a more powerful platform I mean a platform that provides the user with a pleasant experience. Now, to provide a pleasant experience a platform must give the user a choice - a choice of applications that exist for the platform is a step in the right direction. However, GNU/Linux is not such a platform yet. If it were, it would have been embraced by the masses already and it is not. There are a few things that GNU/Linux system is lacking and one of the more important lacking components is a convenient tool that allows a novice create his/her own software for the platform, software that easily manipulates data imported from multiple sources and allows to create graphical interfaces to that data. In the Microsoft this functionality is provided by such a ubiquitous tool as Visual Basic. In the Free Software world there are many tools that are extremely powerful but none of them have the same kind of momentum that Visual Basic delivers on Microsoft platform. VB is taught at schools, it is the language of macros under MS platform.
To answer the question- "What can be the VB for Free Software?" we need to look at the kind of problems that will have to be solved by this tool. The problems solved by VB are of many kinds, but for the general public VB provides the bridge that closes the gap between a user and a multitude of small problems that the user wants to solve. Of-course it is possible to just create a VB IDE for FS platforms but I believe there is a more interesting solution to this problem and it is Java. Just like VB, Java runs in a virtual machine, so the user will never really have direct access to any hardware resources, but an abstract layer of JVM can provide a nice buffer between the user and the hardware and at the same time Java will always behave in the same way on multiple other platforms, including Windows. Java is an OO language but at the same time it is very easy to write functions in Java (static everything). Java has thousands of convenience libraries, there is enough Free Software written for Java that can be integrated into an IDE. However there is a big problem with the language itself - it is not Free.
Sun allows anyone to use Java for free but nobody can modify the language itself except for Sun. In order for Java to become for Free Software and Gnu/Linux what VB became for Microsoft, Java has to be Freed and put out under the GPL. There is also probably a good business sense in it for the Sun Microsystems as well - their language suddenly becomes the language of choice for millions and thousands will work on improving the language, the virtual machine, the compiler etc. In this case Sun will stay in a position that Linus finds himself in - they become the gate-keepers for the vanilla Java tree, but Java will branch and will become much more spread than it is right now. Sun can capitalize on that by providing more Java based solutions and services.
Now it is likely that Sun management will not agree to the change of their Java's status, however, if there was an immediately profitable reason for them to do this, they just may turn around and start thinking about it. A reason that is profitable could be a large sum of cash available to them upon releasing Java under the GPL. Where could this money come from? These money could be collected by the FS and OS supporters, the developers and the users who would like to see more momentum in the GNU/Linux movement towards a successful (wide spread) desktop solution. I suppose no one will seriously object to have one more powerful tool in their Free Software tool-bag. Java can be this tool and it can be just the thing needed to tip the scales over towards quick appearance of a useful and a popular GNU/Linux desktop.
* I use Free to mean Free Software (Libre) and I use free to mean free of charge.
Re:Once bitten, twice shy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, that worked really well for Sun didn't it? Have you not noticed that all of the Microsofties are going around screaming about
Sun prompting MS to produce a Java clone/alternative was a bad idea.... you know, the whole keep your enemies closer thing.
While I am at it (Score:4, Interesting)
I am sure that all of you would agree that the free software community has been facing some bad publicity since the entire SCO incident started about a year ago. I am also sure that when the SCO goes away another publicity stunt will be performed by some other corporation or an entity that could potentially cause more trouble. An earlier article [slashdot.org] on
How can this be ensured and how can it be easily shown in a court of law that this community takes copyright issues seriously? One way that I see is to set up a server that runs the comparator [catb.org] by ESR against any new submission to any open source project against any code released either by mistake on with malice by a closed source vendor.
This will help to identify copyright problems before they arise. Of course to have a proprietary source code base on this server would probably be illegal in itself but it is unnecessary to have the proprietary source code, all that is needed is a set of hash-keys that identify that source code.
How could this work? A copyright protection server (CPS) would have hash-keys supplied by different vendors of software that falls into various categories and the free software projects are also divided into these categories. Let's say there is a free software project that deals with image manipulations. The CPS would run a hash-key generator on the new code submission and then would compare the generated keys with the keys supplied by Adobe or other companies specialized in image manipulations. Of-course the closed source companies would have to run the hash-key generators on their code and supply their keys, and someone has to tell them to do that, but if it is done right then the following would happen:
1. The Free Software community would have better protection from inappropriate code submissions.
2. This can be publicised and shown that the Free Software community takes their work seriously and goes to the great length, much more than any corporations to make sure that their code is Free and free of inappropriate submissions.
3. In a court of law this can be very useful, it shows good faith on the part of the free software community.
4. This would make it easier to also figure out whether the closed source vendors are misusing GPLed software
5. This makes a nice project that can be commercialized (with all the lates IP propaganda and lawsuites.)
6. This hopefully will prevent many possible infringement claims.
Well, this is just a thought, but I think this kind of verification will become part of reality at some point in the future, given more lawsuites.
Any thoughts, comments, suggestions, ideas?
Sun's opinion of GNU/Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey Sun, we know what you think of GNU/Linux. Unix will be back. Really, it will! Everything is beautiful! Don't worry! Be happy! Customers will return to Solaris one day! After all, if Schwartz said it, [newsforge.com] it must be true.
and even Scott is a believer:
The "fad will wear off, and big business will come back [techtarget.com] to solaris".
Sun, don't worry, everything is great. Everybody else should wake up and smell the java [newsforge.com]
My problem with Eric and other similar advocates (Score:2, Interesting)
That's the kind of "you're either with us or against us" mentality I definitely don't want to see in the open source community.
It's the mindset of a fanatic.
But.. how safe a business decision is this?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Java should be opened up to the community, with compatibility standards strictly and ruthlessly enforced.
And maybe, just maybe, .Net could help it along.
The original reason for McNealy's reluctance to open up Java was the "embrace and extend" philosophy we all know so well from Redmond. But, could we expect MS to bother trying to modify Java and develop .Net at the same time?
MS could do it, they have the re$ources, but.. can they afford the mixed message it would send? "Java sucks, use .Net instead.. oh wait, here's our version of Java.."
Opening up Java could work, but only if MS is 100% committed to .Net, and if an officially open Java implementation wins overwhelming community support.
In short, don't expect Sun to open up Java until Microsoft runs the risk of falling into the "sunk cost trap". McNealy is probably well aware of this too..
Sell it instead! (Score:2, Interesting)
It would really be the best of both worlds, we get the source and ability to improve it, and Apple distributes it much wider than Sun ever could.
Re:why? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if this letter really has a point, but SUN is on the ropes to be sure. And it will probably take such a bold and risky move to have any chance at all.
Re:Once bitten, twice shy? (Score:5, Interesting)
if you don't have refactoring capabilities, wtf is the IDE for?
Re:Once bitten, twice shy? (Score:3, Interesting)
IntelliJ - IDEA Really is the best IDE for java.
Re:If Sun is on the ropes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My problem with Eric and other similar advocate (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If Sun is on the ropes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Change the license terms and withdraw all support for older versions, thus forcing everyone to upgrade and pay the bucks?
There's quite a bit of business-critical software running on Java now, and the alternative Java implementations often can't run them. Worst of all, you'd probably lose certifcation and support from other vendors if you don't run the official Sun Java version.
Java could become the cash cow for Sun, they just have to stop the half-baked attempts to milk it (by selling tools nobody needs or tools which compete with significantly better free software alternatives) and go for the real money.
Would the current Java users keep using Sun Java? It depends, but if the introductory pricing is not too extreme, there's hardly any incentive for porting (or investing in non-Sun Java technology). Sun could raise the costs over the years. But maybe it's too late for that, and there isn't so much time left for the company.
Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If Sun is on the ropes... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think your solution combined with ESR's solution would be best for Sun.
That is, sell the compiler(and possibly an Enterprise version of the virtual machine), but allow others to develop compilers of thier own for free. With any luck, it might just sell Java to those who would buy it and get support and keep Java free for those who don't want/need support.
Re:We dont need your stinkin java (Score:3, Interesting)
inaccuracy (Score:4, Interesting)
ESR is crazy (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't imagine what he was thinking when he said that Java is losing out to Perl and Python among Open-sourcers. Java does not compete with P&P on any front whatsoever. Java has proven to be an awkward, heaviweight technology on the client side, and makes a very poor scripting language. But it shines on the server end, where its strong, secure type-checking and exception handling makes programs reliable, and where long-running repetitive tasks allow JIT technology all the time it requires to do an excellent optimization job.
IBM is totally behind Java. It's not going anywhere, libre or not, and Sun is in a good position setting the standards. If I take off my own Free Software fanboy goggles for a minute, it's pretty clear there's no motivation for Sun to make Java free.
Never been impressed with ESR (Score:1, Interesting)
The present essay seems as idiotic. For 99% of the world, Java is already open and free. You don't pay for the runtime and you don't pay for the SDK. OSS purists (bigots?) seem to equate source code freedom with absolute freedom, but practically speaking that simply isn't true.
What ESR and his ilk fail to realize is the concept of OSS would never have gotten the modern world to where it is today. The whole argument of free software is the same as outsourcing high-tech jobs to India to create better jobs in the US.
Why, again? Why now? (Score:2, Interesting)
I found the whole teleology of the argument very strange. Java has been a success story, not a failure for Sun, up to the present. It's already widely-adopted, and so would be around for decades even if it lost all momentum tomorrow. Finally, its target market and mindshare are with commercial developers and software producers, not open source programming communities-- it's not for the licensing a smaller percentage of those choose to work in Java. I found that claim almost disingenous.
I vote for that (Score:2, Interesting)
However, I would not be surprised if Sun is reluctant to do this because of software patent problems. Their lawyers might be telling them that it's impossible.
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Create a WAP [chiralsoftware.net] server
C++ (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't blame the community for the absurd C++ feature called "references" (dumb references - you can't actually use them instead of pointers, because they can't be NULL; at the same time, if you have code with references, pointers and stack-values, everything degenerates into an incomprehensible mess - java references are the way to go, or just pointers), or for the fact that the template sub-language is Turing-complete (yes, you can actually write partial recursive functions in template language ... ugh).
Re:If Sun is on the ropes... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sun: Let Java go and storm the world with Gnome! (Score:5, Interesting)
Sun announced several years ago that they would be standardizing on Gnome for their enterprise desktops. They have made significant contributions since then (let's not be fooled: none of these recent public sector / governmental success stories would have been possible without Sun's accessibility work). When they decided to go with Gnome, they already had a production JVM for Linux that equalled the Windows and Solaris (in that order) virtual machines in performance and stability.
When they went with Gnome, Microsoft had long been banging the .NET / C# drum and Miguel had allocated his devoted team of Mono hackers at Ximian with the explicit intent of bringing a modern programming language, C#, to Linux and integrate it tightly with Gnome.
And Sun does nothing! This is an impossible equation to me:
1] Because it invades Sun's most priced asset: the Java and J2EE mindshare.
2] Maybe not technically, at least not yet, but well in developer mindshare.
I don't understand how Sun can let this happen. That's where Java should be! Everything is prepared: all underlying frameworks are in place (industrial-strength JVM on Linux, the new GTK Swing LF, some native Gnome/GTK-Java integration already works [sourceforge.net], JVM sharing in the pipeline), it's a great way to bring Java to the desktop masses (without having to go through a hostile monopoly) and if Sun doesn't do it, very soon every one will be using their shiny "Java Desktop Systems" to build GTK# applications in .NET on top of Mono.
So I say to Sun:
- Let Java free! You will never get full community and Gnome acceptance until you do.
- Allocate tons of resources to integrating Java with Gnome! And we want real bindings, a buggy Swing Look and Feel is not enough! When a developer sits down to build a Gnome app, they should want to use Java because it's so easy and powerful and well integrated.
- Let people use gcj, GCC's Java-to-native compiler, to produce native binaries from their Java Gnome apps, they're already building for one desktop so screw Write-Once-Run-Anywhere!
- Make your client JVM so good that there's no need to. You're almost there already, most Java apps are today equal to or faster than their C/C++ counterparts on the server side. If Swing hadn't been such a hog and you could tweak that JVM startup time some more, no one would notice the difference on the client-side either.
This may slow down Microsoft's emerging dominance on the free desktop and make that "Java Desktop" brand of yours more than just a PR move.-EE
God damn ESR is a punk. (Score:5, Interesting)
The open-source community has been hearing reports that you have recently said of Sun Microsystem's strategy "The open-source model is our friend". We're glad to hear that, and Sun's support of OpenOffice.org certainly puts some weight behind the claim. But that support is curiously inconsistent, spotty in ways which suggests that Sun is confused in the way it thinks about and executes its open-source strategy.
Oh, I see. So if you want to be our "Friend" that means you have to move lock-step with us and everything you do must benefit us.
Open Office is a huge boost to the Open Source community. It's one of the most powerful weapons in the "war" against Microsoft that a lot of us seem to be emotionally invested in. It provides a real alternative to MS office and a way for business to move away from windows.
But ESR seems to think that to be a "friend" of the open source movement, everything you do must benefit it. And of course, if you don't, you must be "confused." Apparently ESR views the Open Source community as a sort of single-minded Totalitarian regime lead by him, in which any decent is labeled "confusion."
But the casual equation between "open source" and "zero revenue" suggests that on another level you don't really know what you're talking about. Open source is hardly a zero-revenue model; ask Red Hat, which had a share price over triple Sun's when I just checked. Or ask IBM, which is using Linux as a lever to build a huge systems-integration business in markets like financial services that Sun has historically owned.
Okay, share price. Great. As if that isn't a totally meaningless indicator. Why didn't ESR look at market cap, or revenues? Oh yeah, because then RH wouldn't be "bigger". Ever heard of a stock split? How are shares of the company who's board you're on, VA Software, doing? I see you provided them a lot of good advice.
If Sun were prepared to go all the way with open source it could seize back its position of industry leadership. Sun is one of a small handful of companies that would both have the smarts and the street cred to do even better than IBM has from a full-fledged alliance with the open-source community.
Of course, as we all know, street cred == money. Please. And how does IBM have a "full commitment to open-source."? They still sell proprietary software, along with contributing to OSS last I checked.
when Bill Joy came to a Linux conference to push Jini as a universal network-service protocol, we in the open-source community told him straight up "You can have ubiquity or you can have control. Pick one." He picked control, and Jini failed in its promise. The contrast with NFS could hardly be more stark.
This is the best part. So the OSS community's huge sway with OEMs prevented Jini from being implemented in lots of imbedded hardware. Right. It also prevented OSS's great nemesis from flourishing. Oh wait.
There are a lot of reasons why Jini failed, and anyone claming to know exactly what "went wrong" is out of their mind. It may not have succeeded even if it were an open standard.
Today, the big issue is Java. Sun's insistence on continuing tight control of the Java code has damaged Sun's long-term interests by throttling acceptance of the language in the open-source community, ceding the field (and probably the future) to scripting-language competitors like Python and Perl.
Uh yeah. The vast majority of programmers pick the tool they like, and most people in the OSS community use Python because it's a fun programming language that's easy to write (same with Perl, although I kind of think most people it because 'that's what they know') . Most large OSS projects still use C++, and lots of projects are written in Java. I think the percentage of OSS projects that chose a language based on political issues is pretty damn small. Hell, there are probably
Why does anyone listen to ESR??? (Score:5, Interesting)
All of his writings show a distinct lack of depth. He has a superficial understanding of most topics he writes on, and quickly exposes that fact. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt in Unix/Linux/Coding. But, beyond that he should STFU.
As an example, check out the ill-advised, simplistic, racist ramblings from his blog: http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001393.html [gnxp.com]
In the Java essay, he exposes the fact that he has no clue about business financials by comparing the share price of Sun & Red Hat. Anyone who has invested at all knows this is meaningless.. A company with 1M shares @ $100 is worth a lot less than a company with 1B shares @ $33.
So please, ignore the troll and he'll go away.
Re:If Sun is on the ropes... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How much control? (Score:4, Interesting)
Free Software hackers would like to root for Java on this one, but they can't because Java isn't Free. So instead they are spending their time creating Mono or working with Python, Perl, or Ruby.
Right again. I would love to use Java instead of Python, but if I do, my software won't be picked up by Linux distros. Java is, hands down, far superior to any of the interpreted languages available to us. Python has it's benefits in other areas, but it can't compete on speed. Perl is.. well.. I won't go there. OK, it's good for simple scripting tasks like it was originally designed for: extraction and reporting.
Here's the bigger issue: Enterprise business software. This is by far the largest weak spot in the whole world of Open Source. We have absolutely nothing to compete here other than fledgling projects like GNU Enterprise (Python), which aren't ambitious enough to meet the needs of serious business software. Except for.. JBoss, which is Open Source and.. You guessed it: It requires Java!! While I'm not saying that J2EE is the ultimate platform, it does do a lot of things right and it's available now. If Sun opened its JVM/JDK, Linux distros could include JBoss and Free Software hackers would actually start using it! Sure, we should have more than one solution. I still see projects like GNU Enterprise as worthwhile for developing "middle of the road" solutions that aren't as complex as J2EE and aim for the KISS principle. However, Java is a powerful tool that is direly needed in the Open Source toolbox.
Re:If Sun is on the ropes... (Score:2, Interesting)
Ironically, it's probably more proprietary than most of what Microsoft does with
The "idea" is free (Score:3, Interesting)
Smalltalk seems to have had it all (Score:2, Interesting)
I never did get around to learning smalltalk, only know it by its reputation, but it does not seem to have a commercial reputation.
Anyway what else can make a come back after reinvention every 20 years? Well there is GNU/Linux/unix, flared trousers and even LISP for starters.
Python vs Smalltalk vs Java(unfree) in a cat fight. Java wins every time, more commercial developers is the killer measure.
Karma - going down..
Re:the problem with java (Score:5, Interesting)
Can have portability trouble. If this is a problem for you, you can use the old JRE, and things will work well - the equivalent of using a special compatibility layer within NetBSD, IMO. You're comparing apples to oranges here: if nothing changes in the supporting layer, there is no chance of breakage (or more breakage than you had in the first place). If something changes, the chance goes up. Well duh - no surprise there.
Against that, Java (in my experience) does a better job of running across hardware platforms and JRE versions than C does. As part of my current job I've had to run the same code on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux and Solaris boxen, using JREs from 1.3.1 to 1.5 (well, I didn't have to try 1.5, but I wanted to know...) and it worked fine everywhere. I can guarantee this won't happen with your C binaries.
As long as you don't expect miracles, Java pretty much lives up to the promises of 'Write Once, Test Everywhere'. And more often than not, for the vast majority of code I've worked with, it really has managed to be 'Write Once, Run Anywhere' - or at least anywhere I've needed to. YMMV, especially depending on what sort of app you're writing.
Possibly, but only by people who are wrong. Sun certainly never claimed that, nor did anyone who knows what they're talking about when it comes to Java. The rantings of the clueless should never be held against a language, or we'd never get any code written.
Provided you don't want to do anything complex, like have a GUI, I believe.
Not by my reading of it, though IANAL. "Sun grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferrable, limited license without license fees to reproduce and use internally Software complete and unmodified for the sole purpose of running Programs." The supplemental license terms extend that allowing developers to redistribute the JRE with their own code under additional constraints and has a reference to use of the code for development and testing, but AFAICT it doesn't supercede your right to use the license for running programs as defined in the main body of the license.
When it comes to terminating the license, you actually have more rights than Sun do - you have the ability to terminate it just because you want to, which they do not reserve for themselves.
Perhaps your source is getting confused and reading the license agreement for beta software (such as the new 1.5 early access release) which I believe is only available for testing. Which is what betas are normally for anyway.
In very much the same way, if Microsoft doesn't free up their Windows as Linux or NetBSD are free to use and build uppon, it will remain in its niche. I'm sure they don't cry themselves to sleep at nights over that, though.
Don't get me wrong - I'd love to see Java as an open standard in a real way, provided it didn't just open things up for Microsoft to do a demolition job on it. It would be my preferred way for the language to go, for a variety of reasons which others have probably explained in g
Re:why? (Score:3, Interesting)
I had some concerns when we were dealing with Sun, and emailed Scott directly, and he replied fairly promptly, copying the folks who could solve our problems, and the results were swift and effective. (But please don't Slashdot him!)
Re:the problem with java (Score:3, Interesting)
Java cannot compare with C and C++, because it is simply so much easier to write applications in Java, it is simpler than C++, more concise than C, it is better documented, and it is all in one place. Writing software under C++ is no more portable if you use a library that works only on three systems. Any non-trivial C++ program will have dependencies that limit it pretty much to a single platform without tons of portability work. A lot of thought and work went into making NetBSD run on all those platforms--be thankful you don't have to write all that platform-specific assembly code yourself!
Think of using Java like hiring all of Sun's Java programmers to do a lot of the really hard work for you without charging you a dime. How 'bout that? It's really hard to pass up this deal.
Re:If Sun is on the ropes... (Score:2, Interesting)
Firstly, you're specfically (and purposefully) mentioning that a user being able to install a Java plugin for their browser as the only benifit of a less restrictive license just because I mentioned it as an example.
Second, I think the benefit would be the goodwill towards OSS, and therefore getting more business and individual developers on the bandwagon since they have nothing to fear aabout shady/proprietary licensing.
Third, if I can have my browser automatically have applets work, it'd be a more viable way to deliver ("richer") applications through the web, a very ubiquitous medium in it's own right for the very reason that you can have an "app" (ie website) to have potential clients being able to communicate with you with no special involvement from the client. How popular would Amazon be if you had to install a separate application to search and buy books from them.
java's value is copyright not control (Score:2, Interesting)
the control aspect is interesting, but i don't see how they make money of it. i mean are they going to introduce a bug and them demand a ransom for fixing it?
Java still sucks (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:How much control? (Score:5, Interesting)
I personally see Zope as the Free Software answer to JBoss, and I think that it is pretty darn good answer as well. As an application server Zope is a fairly amazing piece of work. However, it won't run your applications designed to run in a Java application server :). There are a lot of companies that have based their businesses around Java, and Free Software doesn't really have an answer to that. JBoss is a great application server, but it isn't really enterprise business software. It certainly isn't going to replace SAP or Peoplesoft anytime soon. It's barely more than the tools you need to build your own business software. Compiere, on the other hand, is business software, and it is also written in Java (and requires Oracle to boot, argh...).
As for Gnu Enterprise. It's problem is not one of not scaling high enough. It's problem is that it's less than half done. I am convinced that Python (especially with a bit of C for speed) can scale high enough to compete with Java. Especially when you consider the fact that hardware continues to get more and more powerful.
However, Java would fill a very important niche in the set of available Free Software tools. Java is nicely situated between the purely interpretted languages like Python and managing your own memory with C and C++. I am just afraid that Sun will react too slowly to take advantage of their current head start. I have been playing with Mono a bit lately, and it is really impressive.
Re:why? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Because he's a "Community Leader" (Score:1, Interesting)
I think the main reason ESR got anyone to listen was that he made the reporters job easier.
The reporters didn't know how to handle this amorphous community, and they were eager to latch onto anyone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about. Linus didn't have the time or the desire to deal with them. Stallman had philosophical differences with the "Open Source" community, and Raymond was one of the people bellowing the loudest.
In reality, the Open Source community is as diverse as any other community. The participant's reasons for being involved are widely varied, and ESR does them a disservice by claiming to speak for everyone.
Nokia's enabling Python on cellphones. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Once bitten, twice shy? (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact I do. Here's a potentially amusing anecdote...
When I first arrived in my classroom for my first Computer Information Systems course, ready to learn C++ (which I quite like now), I noticed that the entire Visual Studio set was installed on the computers. Curious about Java, I decided to open Visual J++, to see if MS's version made any sense.
Not, of course, knowing the first blessed thing about Java or 'J++', I decided to play with the project wizard. Right off the bat, it gave me three options. I could target my product towards an IE-style CAB file (for distribution on the internet), compile it into a standalone
The program politely informed me that it was not possible to make this project into that type of executable.
Keep in mind that I had only made one choice in this wizard before that question had arisen, and I tried over with both options. It was pretty funny, I have to say. But it's not them being dicks to enforce their monopoly. No no. Couldn't be.
--Dan
IDEs -- blech (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a major reason many Windows developers are such Visual Studio fans is that Visual Studio's CLI tools are a pain in the ass to use. The MS virtual terminal really sucks, as does the shell. MS basically killed off all the non-MS compilers back in the day. MS's compilers are the only ones left in wide use on Windows. Since it's a pain in the ass to use the CLI tools, and Microsoft gives you an editor with their GUI front end...programmers end up liking Visual Studio.
I do know one Windows developer that likes the (expensive) Visual Slickedit, though I'm not sure whether it's a full IDE or just an editor. It isn't a compiler, that's for sure.
I've always been rather appalled by Microsoft's IDEs. (The only other IDE I've used is Metroworks on the Mac, and while I didn't strongly prefer either IDE, I really like non-IDE work much more.) Among other things:
* Managing multiple build configurations in VS is a PITA. You can have options that apply globally, or options that apply to individual configurations, but not options that apply to sets of configurations. You can't add and remove object files to a project based on build configuration.
* Incompatibility across versions. Try using VS 6 and a few versions of VS
* Bugginess. VS
* Stupid file formats. Ever tried checking VS 6's
* A pain to set build options. Metrowerks' IDE's build prefs GUI was *much* more logically laid out. You should be able to find basic build options in a GUI within a week of using it. A month after I started using VS, I was *still* wasting huge amounts of time finding various build options in VS. That's silly.
* Can't generate nice graphical call graphs, a la ncc/codeviz.
* Relatively slow -- this is the make system, not the compiler itself. GNU Make is much faster than Microsoft's make system.
* Creates a *ton* of files in projects created. I'd expect a project file, full stop. They have project files, workspace files, cache files,
* The compiler has stopped supporting the current C language.
The only really nice things that I can think of about Microsoft's dev tools are:
* The editor supports very good function completion -- a lot of people cite this as a killer feature. Emacs has etags and fume-mode related functionality. Both are more of a pain to use, and less featureful in some ways (like not showing types of a function being completed). On the other hand, I have had nastiness where the editor got confused about where a constant was defined, and I spent ages tracking down a bizarre bug with two identically-named constants in two projects.
* The debugger/compiler support source-level modification of running programs when one is debugging. God only knows what awful hacks were done to get this working, but apparently it works well enough for general use.
Really, a lot of the people that I know have used Borland's ancient IDE (I ha
Re:Well, maybe they will listen to him (Score:2, Interesting)
Once something like Boa Constructor really works beautifully, Python will be unstoppable.
And to all those people who give the knee-jerk boring reply that they don't like the lack of braces (or don't want white space to be part of the syntax, or whatever) Just try putting comment lines at the end of indented regions.
fun printFive():
for i in range(5):
print i
#
#
There... now even my brace-smart smart indenting programmer's editor will do the right thing when I paste code. (It will put it at the appropriate indent level regrardless of where it was copied from.)
Re:If Sun is on the ropes... (Score:2, Interesting)
That problem was already solved. Split the offending company into two. Bush intervened before it actually happened.
Since I basially think that would just destroy the commercial software industry, why not do it outright?
Au contraire, once the playing field is levelled, commercial software would naturally increase... honest software vendors don't have to worry about a certain company's illegal business practices driving them out of business. And yea, M$ has been responsible for sooo many businesses going bankrupt illegally.
Free software works for me. Well, the obvious answer is that it doesn't really hurt MS nearly as much as it hurts MS's customers who have to try to transistion.
While a small amount of free software is good. If the amount of free software increased to say, 50%, software, as a profession, would disappear. How many PHBs are interested in paying for software if it is available for free.
Look at Sun's SCSL (license), it's basically a clone of GPL, so that Sun gets free bug fixes and enhancements for Java.
Re:If Sun is on the ropes... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that's a little different. Netscape was already hopelessly behind when they open sourced their product. And there wasn't any hope of generating real revenue from the browser anyway. What they needed was to promote an open browser market so that Microsoft couldn't hijack HTML and HTTP. They succeeded posthumously in that respect, but their server business couldn't hold out that long.
The point of Java is to level the playing field. Sun needs people to write software for their systems. They won't do that if they have to write for Motif and UNIX, they'll write for Windows instead. They'll only write in Java if it will work well on their users' platforms. And that's the problem.
Sun doesn't know how to write a runtime that will work well for every platform. They need Apple to write an efficient JRE for Mac OS X, Windows experts for Windows, and Linux experts for Linux. And they need people to figure out how to compile Java straight to machine language (GCC's gcj) and make it fully compliant with the latest Java standards. The platform that Sun neglected the most, Linux, is the one that's most important to the success of Java now. Sun is adopting a Linux desktop (GNOME) so if they want Java software running on their own system they need to convince developers that Java is a viable solution for Linux desktops. That software can then be utilized on Sun's desktops. What does Sun gain if everyone just uses Java on Mac OS X or Windows? Their JVM and JDK are free.