The Curious Incident of Sun in the Night-Time 370
Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is carrying a story by Richard Stallman which blasts Sun's recent Java move, claiming it is deceptive and self-serving, makes Java neither free nor even open source, and leaves him wondering why it has attracted so much attention."
Re:Understandable (Score:3, Interesting)
Free Software doesn't need Sun, but Sun uses and distributes Free software. Sun should work with RMS, his type of software is * gaining * market share. If Sun doesn't shape up real soon they will soon become go out of business, leaving proprietary java in a mess, and another popular de-facto java won't have to "catch up" to sun's.
Show some gratitiude (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:IBM legal counsel is not handwaving (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, yes it is. The exact same "residual" issue exists with any source code that isn't in public domain. That includes GPLed code. I could write a module that's extremely similar to GPLed code, and the original author of the GPL code could sue me for failing to observe the licensing restrictions imposed by the GPL.
I hate to break it to people, but merely existing is a legal risk. The only way to mitigate that risk is to attempt to only do business with entities you trust. Now in the entire time that the SCSL code has existed (7 YEARS!), Sun has never lifted a finger against ANY entity over similar code. Nor have they lifted a finger against free Java or J2EE implementations for other licensing restrictions. In fact, they've tried to be helpful. (As helpful as you can expect a large, slow-moving corporation to be.)
Now that Sun has tried to address the concerns levied against them about the SCSL code, they've been demonized for trying to help. Well I'm sorry. I can't help people who are naturally distrustful of those that are trying to help, while simultaneously falling into a trap of the enemy [mono-project.com].
For comparison, what's Microsoft's history? Oh yes: use any means necessary to CRUSH each and every threat posed against their dominance. This includes bad licensing, theft, bad-faith negotiations, "aqusitions", misleading advertisements, etc., etc., etc. And the OSS community has just gotten into bed with them.
Re:Remarkably Calm and Coherent for RMS (Score:3, Interesting)
(Grand parent's point) ---> (whoooooooosh)
(your head here)
But why listen to the grandparent? I for one can't wait for there to be a million different versions of Java that aren't cross compatible, with various open and closed source projects using specific copies of each one, resulting in mass confusion.
Something I'm very concerned about... (Score:2, Interesting)
... is that Java will become Open Source and the inevitable forking will begin along with the overnight apperance of "UltraJava", "DestilledJava", "ExpressoJava", etc. all with additional features, features removed... People will add things that make some other language "better" and believe it's the key thing missing from Java adoption.
But the one thing that has me terrified is that a certain company will begin a massive FUD campaign informing major businesses that Java no longer has identity, a real ownership and that it will become a nightmare to work with since JVMs and standards have been blown out the window. And they would no doubt succeed by picking a number of crappy Java implementations to compare against their much optimised and vendor locked in C Pound language.
Shortly afterward *unix servers would begin to disappear from major businesses as they implement Windows Vista Server 2007 Virus Spyware Patch Version 3.5 Since Last Tuesday
Re:Open Letter to Slashdot "Editors" (Score:3, Interesting)
Well said.
I was originally going to bash Java and make a few snide remarks about Ruby on Rails. But yes. Slashdot is terrible. Calling it yellow/tabloid journalism is too good. I don't know why I keep reading the site.
That being said I'm still going to bash Java (and Ruby). I've found a really wonderful video demonstration on why Java sucks ass for developing web apps. [nasa.gov] So I really don't care if Java becomes truly open source or not.
Re:Before all the.... (Score:2, Interesting)
RMS is referencing Doyle directly I'm sure.
Re:Honestly... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is just complete and utter nonsense. Microsoft is free to implement whatever language they want. Whether it's based on Sun's code or not is completely beside the point. What they can't do is calling it Java unless it *is* Java, and that was the subject of the lawsuit.
Wow. You have managed to advance a technically correct, but completely and utterly worthless point. (Seriously, your argument is so good at arguing while avoiding the point entirely that you'd have a great future as a Microsoft lawyer).
Microsoft can fork Java - and has. Microsoft tried to fork Java once (back in the 1.1 days), and it took Sun years to shut down that fork (well into 1.4). And for all that time, Java writers were crippled by having to code to the 1.1 standard because that was all MS Java and Sun Java had in common (which delayed acceptance of Swing by several years). Then Microsoft came up with .NET and the CLR, which when you think about it, is a reimplementation of Java with different semantics. It's a de facto fork, just different enough to avoid lawsuits but attempting to do exactly the same thing. And given how thoroughly Mono has embraced that fork, Microsoft succeeded.
The name "Java" is something for lawyers to argue about - I could start a language called NotJava, which implements 100% of the Java spec but isn't certified, and (assuming my implementation were good) I guarantee you people would use it. After all, Linux isn't certified by anyone, and everyone uses Linux kernels. In terms of the market, it only matters that software be as easy to use as Java (i.e. have good documentation, easy to install, easy to write effective programs) and as powerful and featureful as Java. I repeat: the name "Java" does not matter.
There are already independent java implementations out there - look at IBM for one, GCJ for another (albeit poor) one. RMS is whining because he's found a java implementation to actually be hard, and he'd like Sun to do his work for him. He already has what his standard rhetoric asks for: an open standard upon which Free Software can compete fairly. But Free Software has done very poorly in comparison to Sun's Java. RMS is unable to understand that his Free Software dream has been beaten by an open and technically better competator without matching perfectly with his vision, so he starts ranting about how Sun isn't RMS-approved Open Source(tm) when they really are open source.
And RMS would like nothing better than to fork Java, insert some GPL-only technology, and see that technology adopted such that it kills off Sun's non-GPL Java and makes the world a "happy, GPL-only place". This is actually quite clever: instead of implementing the whole of the runtime, he only has to implement one feature. It's an insidious ploy, worthy of Microsoft, and RMS is complaining about how Sun isn't letting him do it?
So at the end, here's my point. Sun is worried about two forks. One is the Microsoft fork, and how guaranteed prolifieration can stall adoption of technologies essential for Java's success. Second is the GPL fork, which adopts good features but forces Sun out of the Java business because they can't match the features without GPLing their own code. (BTW, the OpenSolaris license is squarely aimed at that second concern).
Java is already fragmented (Score:2, Interesting)
How [apache.org] can [shudo.net] you [sax.sax.de] not [openjit.org] see [kaffe.org] this [microsoft.com]?
Javas problem is not that it might get fragmented, the problem is that it IS fragmented. Do something about it! Let Java free!
I just don't see it (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps, its because people can take the Jakarta projects and use them on WebSphere, Weblogic, Sun One (or whatever its called today), Oracle App Server, or almost any other J2EE server. Developers are using free software on proprietary servers in huge numbers. Perhaps, just perhaps, the majority don't really care about the license issue. If they did then maybe there would be a lot more people working on the CLASSPATH project.
Java probably has a huge market because that market has so many players and is so damn big. OTOH,
Most businesses (in my experience) choose proprietary over open source because a salesperson SOLD it to them and they want somebody to blame when things go wrong. You'll argue that this is stupid. You are right it is. Sun's not going to pay them anything for a bug in the VM (neither will IBM). But, when their boss comes down with the hammer, they want someone else to point to.