Simon Phipps on the Process of Opening Java

twofish writes "Simon Phipps, the chief open-source officer at Sun Microsystems, has reaffirmed Sun's commitment to Open Source in an interview with computerworld. The focus of the interview is Simon's efforts to fully open source Java. He points out that many problems need to be resolved before Java can be open sourced — ownership, legal, access, encumbrances and relationships with Java licensees. It took Sun a full five years to solve these issues with Solaris. However Simon predicts that it won't take anything near this amount of time to complete the task with Java. Of course, one of the other concerns for OS Java is the resulting incompatible versions and breaking of the Java WORA model (Gosling himself has always been particularly concerned about incompatible forks resulting in the introduction of an open source version of Java) and this opens up additional problems for the open source Java model."

JavaPosse discussion

[tcopeland]

The JavaPosse [javaposse.com] had some notes on this a while back and they seem to keep an eye on the issue. That podcast definitely worth listening to once or twice a week to keep up with the latest news.

Re:Someone has to say it

[grammar fascist]

Java sucks *and* it's closed source. I'll stick to C, Python and Perl thank you.

Naw. Here's the real deal, from someone who knows quite a few languages:

- Java is adequate for just about every programming task
- Java's generics are mostly adequate
- Java's GUI support is good once you let Swing twist your head into a fleshy knot
- Java's library support is above average
- Java's floating-point performance is quite good, especially with HotSpot
- The HotSpot runtime is freakin' amazing at what it does
- The Java language is wordy, which mostly has to do with strict typing (and lately, from adding generics)
- Server-side Java (JSPs, servlets, etc.) is unnecessarily complicated and probably designed by Satan himself

Hope that helps.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[KarmaMB84]

Back then, MS's JVM was one of the best ones available. However, that distinction may not mean much since most JVM's blew the goat...

Re:Exactly

[beemishboy]

Not that IBM is waiting to fork it, but one of the primary companies Sun worries about forking is IBM - looking at Eclipse with its SWT instead of Swing for instance.

Re:Exactly

[fm6]

It is fair to say that down the line even when they do opensource it, Sun's version will be the defacto standard.

You're somewhat misinformed. Sun's implementation has never been a basis for determining what's "standard". That's because Sun's implementation, like every other Java implementation (and there are quite a few [dwheeler.com]) is required to adhere to a written specification [sun.com].

People (including everybody at Sun) often say "Java" when they mean "Sun's Java implementation". That can be misleading. When you talk about "open sourcing Java" you're really talking about open sourcing a particular implementation of Java.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[Tim C]

Another good hint is when developers have to "port" their application from their own desktop to work properly on the test server.

In 6 or so years of doing server-side Java development, I have never needed to do that, nor have I ever heard of anyone needing to do so. I humbly suggest that if someone does find themselves needing to do so, they've done something very wrong.

Re:Java already breaks the WORA model

[miro2]

Have you ever written code which uses the java.net.NetworkInterface class? Thats a core part of the language, and its pretty damn easy to get code which runs completely differently on Windows and Linux simply because they are going to provide different NetworkInterface implementations (and frankly, a different number of NetworkInterfaces).

Re:open java equals forks for major vendors

[mark_lybarger]

they have their own fork of a jvm. the big boys with their own jvm all have licensed sun's jvm and then tweaked it to their platform. bea purchased that blazing fast, jrockit, x86 jvm. what were the origins of that one? http://weblogic.sys-con.com/read/43022.htm [sys-con.com] that's right, it's ripped from sun's jvm.

lots of folks have considered creating a full fledged java environment. they end up taking sun's and tweaking it. a full blown jvm is just plain hard to do. the gnu folks have been trying it for eons now, and found it was just plain hard to do. all those gui classes really make things challenging.

from what i hear the certification tests are laughable.