Sun To Choose GPL For Open-Sourcing Java

An anonymous reader writes, "Sun is about to announce its plans for open-sourcing Java SE and ME, according to CRN — and they're going to use the GPL, not their own CDDL or another less-restrictive license."

Re:Let someone clarify...

[TrappedByMyself]

It only affects people who would use the Java source code itself. Does not affect people who develop applications in Java or people who use Java applications. So...a prime example of someone who would be affected would be Microsoft. They have their Java implementation in .NET. If they were to replace their implementation with Sun's, by hooking into the actual source code, they would also be bound by the GPL. I really think this is a good use of the GPL. Something as high profile as Java would be a huge target for "embrace and extend", and this protects

Correction: Not the only moneymaker

[PCM2]

On the other hand, is this Sun's way of wiping their hands clean of everything besides their only Java moneymaker (J2EE)?

Actually, J2ME is a primary Java moneymaker for Sun, also. I work for an enterprise IT weekly (InfoWorld) and my colleagues and I always end up rolling our eyes whenever we are invited for a big press chat at Sun only to be regaled for half an hour with stories about running games on Java-powered cell phones. We could care less about games, but it's obviously a big issue for Sun and something they want their shareholders to know about.

Re:Er...

[Daniel Phillips]

Out of the most popular Free licenses, GPL probably is the most restrictive - many others don't have the restriction you mention.

The GPL really only has one restriction worthy of the name: that software placed under the GPL must remain free, in accordance with the wishes of the programmer who first placed the software under the GPL. It is precisely this alignment with programmer's wishes that makes GPL so popular.

Re:Doesn't make sense (not just grinding an axe)

[Daniel Phillips]

This won't be embedded in a lot of things because of that.

Just like Linux isn't embedded in a lot of things? ;-)

Keep in mind that proprietary Java programs may be developed and run under a GPL'd Java system.

Re:This will be super cool.

[ardor]

I don't feel that plugins give as good of an experience as native browser controls.

Technically, the difference should be zero, else something is very wrong. Take Safari/Konqueror for instance; *everything* is handled by plugins, right down to simple images.

Plugins really are just elements like anything else, they are just loaded at run-time and not linked statically into the browser. Thats all.

Re:w00t!

[concreationist]

Look closely. It says "!itastrap", i.e. it's not a trap. From the tagging FAQ [slashdot.org]:

• For the opposite of a tag, prefix it with "!", e.g. "!funny" means "not funny."

Re:Doesn't make sense (not just grinding an axe)

[burndive]

Firefox isn't GPL

Yes, it is. Firefox is tri-licensed under MPL, GPL, and LGPL.

Re:Er...

[ajs318]

An individual who has the right to own slaves could be considered "more free" (assuming for a moment that freedom could be quantified meaningfully) than an individual who has no right to own slaves. However, in a nation where individuals are allowed to own slaves, the average level of freedom may well be rather less than in a nation where individuals are not allowed to own slaves, and some would use the minimum level of freedom as a criterion for judgement.

On the one hand, you could say that the people who don't like the GPL are too lazy to write their own closed-source software from scratch; they want to base it on GPL software, but the GPL exists precisely to present that kind of thing. On the other hand, you could say that the people who prefer the GPL to BSD-style licences are just being lazy and don't want to put in the effort to make an Open Source clone of any closed-source fork the Hoarders may come up with. Both sides have a point ..... also, the GPL is rather long-winded:

$ wc /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL
340 2968 17992 /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL
$ wc /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD
26 225 1499 /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD

Figures are lines, words, characters. Note that the GPL uses 12x as many characters and 13x as many words as the BSD licence, so the BSD licence must contain longer words than the GPL. Each licence can, however, be summarised using just four words -- in fact, the same four words, just arranged in a different order! The BSD licence boils down to "sharing is not stealing", while the GPL boils down to "not sharing is stealing".

Re:Yesssssss........

[odourpreventer]

Remember J++? "Embrace and extend".

Re:You grossly misunderstand.

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU Classpath actually has quite a bit of 1.4 and even some 1.5 features - http://builder.classpath.org/ [classpath.org] has API comparisons. I have no idea where the 1.2 came from, it's probably just an outdated page in need of updating.

But the original question wasn't answered. Is this only concerning the VM, or the class libraries (which are currently released under the non-GPL compatible CDDL) as well?

Re:RIP Java

[TheRaven64]

Any ARM chip with a J in its name incorporates Jazelle, which allows it to run Java bytecode natively. Other chips support Thumb-2EE mode, which does things like null pointer and array bound checking in hardware, and is designed as a target that it is easy to JIT compile Java bytecode to.

Any modern 'phone has a J2ME runtime environment, often accelerated by using one of these features. Last week Erisson released their J2ME stack under the Apache 2.0 license.