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Sun to Release Java Source Code

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue May 16, 2006 02:53 PM
from the long-time-coming dept.
Java Programming IT Technology
pete314 writes "After resisting for years, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz at JavaOne this morning said that he will release the source code for Java. The company is asking developers to provide feedback on how to best get there and prevent forking and fragmentation."
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[+] Linux: Sun Puts its Weight Behind Ubuntu Linux 338 comments
fak3r writes "Sun today announced that they are putting their weight behind Ubuntu Linux. While Ubuntu has been many people's desktop Linux choice for a few years now, with its Debian heritage, you can see what kind of server it could be. Slap that on the new Sun 1Us with the new Niagra T1's CPU, the one that'll have four, six or eight cores each, and go to town."
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  • Misleading Headline (Score:5, Informative)

    by AKAImBatman (238306) * <akaimbatman.gmail@com> on Tuesday May 16 2006, @02:55PM (#15344634) Homepage Journal
    "After resisting for years, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz at JavaOne this morning said that he will release the source code for Java.

    BZZT! WRONG! Java source code has been available for YEARS! (And no, I'm not going to bother linking. If you don't already know where to find the SCSL and JRL licensed code by now, you need to pull your head out of your butt and Google it.)

    This article is nothing but a blurb that suggests that Sun is looking at Open Sourcing Java. (What the Slashdot pundits have been screaming for, for years now.) Unfortunately, one of OSI's core requirements is forking. So Java will never be able to make the pundits happy. :-/

    • Re:Misleading Headline (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Coryoth (254751) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:12PM (#15344801) Homepage Journal
      Unfortunately, one of OSI's core requirements is forking. So Java will never be able to make the pundits happy.

      Sure they can - there are other ways to pevent forking than in the license. Look at most of the major OSS projects around and you'll see that there is very little in the way of forking - sure minor forks exist but they quickly die. Sun doesn't care about some minor fork of Java that 20 people use that eventually dies, they are worried about a significant competing standard that honestly splits developers between two different platforms. How often has that happened with big OSS projects? Hardly ever. The question is not so much "what can be done to prevent forking" but "what happens that causes a successful fork". The major examples of significant splits in the OSS world would be Emacs/XEmacs, gcc/ecgs, and XFree86/Xorg. In each of those cases the reason for both the fork, and the success of the fork, comes down to the original project stagnating and being unresponsive to change. Avoid that and you tend to avoid significant forks.

      Jedidiah.
      • Sun doesn't care about some minor fork of Java that 20 people use that eventually dies

        But they DO care about IBM or Microsoft creating a VM that advertises compatbility, but actually pulls the bait-and-switch routine. Remember, Microsoft already tried to pull that routine with the NON-OSS version of Java. It was the license that stopped them. This time, you can be sure that they would stay precisely inside the letter of the law. No Java trademarking, but no compatability testing either. Companies will start to rely on it for its Windows performance, and then Microsoft will start introducing subtle differences. Before you know it, users will blame Sun for being incompatible.
        • But they DO care about IBM or Microsoft creating a VM that advertises compatbility, but actually pulls the bait-and-switch routine. Remember, Microsoft already tried to pull that routine with the NON-OSS version of Java.

          Sure, but they will still own and control the Java trademark and they can simply bar such bait-and-switch advertising. Microsoft can fork Java all they want, they just can't call it Java, nor Java comnpatible. Besides MS is unlikely to do any such thing now since their efforts are heavily su

        • But they DO care about IBM or Microsoft creating a VM that advertises compatbility, but actually pulls the bait-and-switch routine.

          One way to manage that risk might be to pull a page from the (oddly enough) pen & paper RPG world -- when Wizards of the Coast adapted the open source idea to those kind of games by releasing the core of D&D/3e under its Open Gaming License as the d20 System Reference Document, it faced similar concerns, so its content licenses requires surrendering rights that the us

          • Re:IBM? Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Schraegstrichpunkt (931443) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @04:19PM (#15345525) Homepage
            Microsoft's probable response to OSS Java, would be to comb through the source code for bugs, and call a press conference to announce "one gadzillion bugs found in open source Java, more probably exist".

            I think the last thing Microsoft wants to do right now is to put "lots of bugs == bad" into people's minds.

              • What stops them from adopting one of the existing open source VMs, "embracing and extending" it (still open source, of course), and doing that now?

                You do know that Microsoft gave the Kaffe project money [wired.com], right? The stipulation was that Kaffe had to add Microsoft extensions to its codebase. Turns out, Kaffe never managed to produce a competitive VM (though it's looking pretty good these days) and thus never had the impact that Microsoft had hoped for.
      • Ok, I will throw out an example.

        Microsoft says "Great Sun open sourced Java". We will take it bundle it with windows, change all the underlying code so that it actually uses windows API's, remove anything that competes against our stuff like SWING, EJB's, Servlets, messaging API's et al, and make it so that our Java only runs on Windows, and even if you try to run a "normal" Java application , it will not work unless you change it to support com.microsoft.xxx libraries, and jump through a ton of hoops.

        Now

        • Re:Misleading Headline (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Coryoth (254751) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @04:00PM (#15345324) Homepage Journal
          You throw out a couple of scare scenarios here with either Microsoft or IBM making a mess of Java, but as far as I can tell they are just that, wild scare scenarios that simply aren't viable if Sun is at all on the ball. For starters Sun can keep the Java trademark and simply bar Microsoft and IBM from advertising whatever they care to sell as "Java". From there it is a question of exactly how either Microsoft or IBM is going to get their new language and VM (whatever they decide to call it - maybe microsoft will call it C# and .NET; no, wait, they already did that) to be dominant, or at least bootstrap it into being a competing standard. Microsoft can do that, as you point out, by leveraging their monopoly. The thing is they've already done that: C# and .NET. They can do that quite successfully whether Sun opens sources Java or not. So for Microsoft the argument is rather moot. What about IBM? They don't have a monopoly to leverage so they'd have to resort to the nasty tactic of making a better language and VM with better libraries to manage to get it to take off. But wait, they can only do that if Sun drop the ball in exactly the manner I described and let Java stagnate and become unresponsive to change. So we're back where we started. Sun open sourcing Java really isn't going to make a lot of difference unless Sun drops the ball themselves - which is exactly what I originally said.

          Jedidiah.
          • If Sun can stop anyone from using the word "Java" then we agree, but if they allow forks then it appears that Microsoft could call it MsJava and change their vm to also accept Java compiled code.

            I am not talking about a complete rewrite of a language like they did with .Net and C#. I am talking about them having control of a JVM. We have lived in that world and it sucked, I don't think anyone wants to go back to it again.

            As far as IBM goes they still own a lions share of the server market and could easily
      • Sun is worried about IBM forking there code. Which is predictable. Or what about Microsoft trying to take another jab at Java. its not Open Source developers they fear.
        • Which interestingly enough took place between proprietary systems, not open ones. In that sense the UNIX wars are more akin to the battle between Java and C# and .NET (which could, indeed, be seen as damaging to the VM market). That is to say, regardless of what Sun does with Java they are already facing the same sorts of problems.

          Jedidiah.

    • Re:Misleading Headline (Score:5, Insightful)

      by squiggleslash (241428) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:28PM (#15344946) Homepage Journal
      It depends on whether they prohibit or merely discourage forking. Indeed, Sun could even go the trademark route with some success, with only the official Sun Java, and specific licensees (such as creators of alternative Java implementations that conform to the spec) being allowed to use the trademark. This is compatible with the GPL. The fact you can't call your fork "Java" doesn't mean your freedom to change and distribute it has been affected.

      There's a more interesting issue here. Sun Java is an embarassment to the OSI. Over the last few years, by using a community driven development process, Java has improved leaps and bounds. Essentially, Sun said "What the Open Source movement says is right, except for the freedom part". And given the OSI keeps being at pains to argue that it's merely a front for software freedom, trying to encourage the development of free software by promoting community-driven development processes which, supposedly, rely upon the software being developed to be Free, this really doesn't hasn't helped it much.

      Essentially, the OSI says "We must have free software, because free software means a community of interested parties can develop a program to a much higher standard than would otherwise be the case if it was proprietary. We describe this whole thing as "Open Source"."

      Sun responds with: "Aha! But Java isn't free, and it too is developed by a community of interested parties, and they've generated a much higher standard of product than would otherwise have been the case if it wasn't developed using a community process. So your argument fails because you don't need software to be free to use your "open source" development model!"

      ESR responds with: "You all suck. Set Java free!!!1!"

      So why's Sun "open sourcing" Java? I think they're just looking at ensuring the official Sun implementation has wider adoption, by removing licensing barriers. Free software licenses happen to be a great way to get there. Sun wants to get Java "out there", especially with .NET nipping at its heels. The real problem with Sun's strategy hasn't been forsaking the development model advantages of the OSI's "Open Source", it's been that it's harder to integrate the official Sun Java, the reference implementation, with the non-Java world, because of licensing issues.

      And as such, I don't think Sun gives a rats arse what the OSI thinks.

      FWIW, I wrote about this in my journal [slashdot.org].

          • Re:Misleading Headline (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Decaff (42676) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @07:55PM (#15347259)
            OTOH you could view it like this:

            Sun doesn't support Java on Linux. Open sourcers complain. Now, they do, thanks to open sourcers complaining.

            Sun didn't support Java on Linux because of open source pressure. They supported it because Linux was very successful commercially and so needed an implementation of the primary commercial development language - Java.

            Sun doesn't support Java on Linux as a tier-1 platform. Open sourcers complain. Now, they do, thanks to open sourcers complaining.

            Which is complete nonsense. Sun have supported Java on Linux as a primary platform for a very long time.

            Sun doesn't release source code for Java. Open sourcers complain. Now, they do, thanks to open sourcers copmlaining.

            You need to have a far better understanding of Linux and Java history.

            I really don't think you understand how little open source matters in this respect. Java is already the number one development language in almost all areas of development - open source, server side, commercial application development. Sun has open sourced more lines of code in the past year than any other organisation - the entire Solaris codebase, and now they are doing this for Java. However, unless they deliver the entire source code as GPL directly to Richard Stallman, along with a grovelling apology for ever having doubted the true open source faith, some people will never be satisfied!

  • Its Simple (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @02:55PM (#15344637) Journal
    Use a spoon. Not only does it prevent you from forking, but its really hard to fragment anything with it.

  • C'mon Jeanie! *Please* get back in your bottle! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pla (258480) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @02:58PM (#15344680) Journal
    Jonathan Schwartz at JavaOne this morning said that he will release the source code for Java. The company is asking developers to provide feedback on how to best get there and prevent forking and fragmentation.

    Well, as a developer, I will tell you THE one and only way to prevent forking and fragmentation...

    Don't release the source code.


    Oops.

  • How to prevent forking and fragmentation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gronofer (838299) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @02:59PM (#15344686)
    The code isn't going to fork itself. If Sun is doing a reasonable job maintaining the source code, they don't have much to fear from a fork. If they are not doing a good job, a fork would hardly be a bad thing.

    • The code isn't going to fork itself. If Sun is doing a reasonable job maintaining the source code, they don't have much to fear from a fork.

      That presumes that there isn't an 800lbs. gorilla sitting in the next room just plotting to catch you unaware and clobber you.

      In the current OSS world, there is a sort of agreed upon level of friendliness between projects. Projects may compete, but they also cooperate, and everyone is more focussed on creating the best project they can, and not just trying to kill

      • I think this concern is outdated. Now that Microsoft have .NET they are hardly likely to put much effort into Java.

        I think even at the time such problems could have been avoided by releasing Java with a GPL licence. Most likely Microsoft simply wouldn't have touched it on those terms. Any changes they made would have been available to anyone in any case. Even if the "market decided" to prefer Microsoft's version over Sun's, it's would hardly have been the end of Java.

        Now with a dominant .NET on the other

  • Change the title (Score:5, Insightful)

    by clevelandguru (612010) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @02:59PM (#15344696)
    The title should read "Sun to Open Source Java". The source code has been available for a long time.

  • Trademark usage. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:01PM (#15344711)
    What I don't get is why Sun have such a hissy fit over supposed Java incompatibilites introduced through forking of free licensed code. What's to stop them preventing people from calling derivitive versions 'Java'? Sun could implement strict compliance testing, a-la UNIX, to ensure that derivitives are compatible, and can license the 'Java' trademark for use by those compatible versions. Problem solved.

  • You want to prevent forking? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trigun (685027) <evil@nosPAM.evilempire.ath.cx> on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:02PM (#15344717)
    Create a strong community with strong corporate involvement. If somebody does fork the code, the project will either die or be assimilated back into the main branch. Don't worry too much about others, just make sure that Sun will stand behind an official community. And standing behind them also means listening to them, even the ideas that you don't like.

    Look at Perl. It's open source, and hasn't really forked. It has, however, evolved.

    • "Look at Perl." (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dystopian Rebel (714995) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:28PM (#15344948) Journal
      Just so I fully grasp your analogy, do you mean Perl < 6.0, which was damnably hard to read, or Perl >= 6.0, which will be impossible to understand?
    • No offense to Perl fans out there, but Perl doesn't have a Microsoft and and IBM trying to purposely introduce incompatable forks.

      Making Java open source, in the sense of a GPL or similar license, will kill Java.
      • > Making Java open source, in the sense of a GPL or similar license, will kill Java.

        Then it deserves to die. This is not Uncle Joe-Bob's job going south to NAFTA, so what on earth inspires such protectionist claptrap for Java's sake? This is code. Evolve or die.

        Microsoft has .NET and doesn't give a fig about being kicked around by the Java crowd anymore. There's even IKVM for when you still want Java. As for IBM, what was their unpardonable crime? Writing a new toolkit? That they didn't gobble dow

    • Re:You want to prevent forking? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by blamanj (253811) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:54PM (#15345250)
      Take a feature like generics. There were at least two implementations (Pizza, GJ) available a couple of years before JDK 1.5. That's a fork that could have happened easily.

      There are also raging debates over how certain numerics extensions should be done. You could argue that a minor fork has already happened with logging. Some people have a strong preference for Log4j over the Java API.

      You get three or four examples of good but different forks, and Java as a stable, uniform platform could be in trouble.
  • Anyone can use the code. You can only call yourself "Java" if you hit certain specs and pass some tests. In other words, if you can prove that you meet the Java standards (with API support etc), you can call yourself Java and use the source code. If not, you aren't Java. Feel free to use the source code.

    This may not be a GPL license, but that's alright.

    Is there any reason why such an approach wouldn't work?
    • They're afraid that someone will linux it.

      That is, come up with a new implementation that will become more popular than the original.

    • In other words, if you can prove that you meet the Java standards (with API support etc), you can call yourself Java and use the source code.

      It's worked well enough for the C camp. Has Java been submitted as an EMCA or ANSI or ISO standard? Of course there are multiple competing compilers which I guess is what Sun wants to avoid.

      This is good for the community; maybe not so much Sun. It will at least force Sun to stay on their toes; maybe by doing so they'll manage to invent a new business along they way

  • Criteria #1 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TopSpin (753) * on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:11PM (#15344792) Journal
    Whatever 'how' you come up with must satisfy one simple criterion: make it possible for the major Linux distributions to include the Sun JVM, runtime (tailored to whatever degree necessary to work well,) and source, in their product.

  • Just don't break it, please (Score:3, Funny)

    by mattypants (169026) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:13PM (#15344810)
    Although the source for the reference platform has been available for some time, the fact that it may become 'free' means forks are inevitable, and that's the only thing that's missing from Java, namely the freedom to fork it. Mind you, if the C++ crowd get hold of it that's what it will be... completely forked.

  • Why is this a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Were-Rabbit (959205) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:20PM (#15344871)
    Whereas I'm not surprised that Slashdot is bringing out the normal anti-Sun's-attitude-towards-Java dogma, is this really a surprise? Jonathan Schwartz is closer to being a pro-Slashdot geek than Scott McNealy ever was. If anything, McNealy was just an arrogant ass who liked staying in his ivory tower with Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. Schwartz has always shown to be more of a geek than McNealy, and releasing the source code to Java has been a "cry of the geeks" for a long time.

    (Note that I don't use "geek" derogatorily as I fondly consider myself to be one.)

    Sun is giving us a ton of surprises in the past few years with Schwartz on board - from AMD processors to their first, AFFORDABLE powerhouse workstations (Ultra 20). I'm not surprised by this move at all, but I also don't blame them for wanting to be able to protect one of their revenue streams. At least Sun is trying. I guess the Slashdot "make it free or forget it" is still too strong, based on the responses I've seen so far in this thread. Looks like when it comes to Java, Sun is damned whether they do or don't. Pity.

  • YES (Score:3, Funny)

    by JavaLord (680960) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:40PM (#15345063) Journal
    I can't wait to make the Javalord JVM. Soon the internet will be overrun with craplets that only work on my JVM. MUHAHAHA

  • In other news.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by dmt99 (123849) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:43PM (#15345120)
    Duke Nuke'em forever will release their source code....

  • At this late date, who cares. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jmorris42 (1458) * <jmorris.beau@org> on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:49PM (#15345200) Homepage
    Seriously, at this late date in the game who cares anymore what Sun does? Those who care not for Freedom have already adopted Java and those who care are either using another language or are now firmly in the GCJ camp and, knowing Sun, won't leave for any bait & switch offer from Sun. I mean, raise your hand if you believe Sun's offer to "open source" Java will actually become a code dump under an OSI approved license. And the odds of it's license (and you can bet your last dollar it WILL be Yet Another License) being GPL compatible are null.

    Even today's new initiative to loosen the binary license to permit distribution repackaging is being being greeted by a certain amount of scepticism just because it is Sun. Personally I'll believe it is for real (as opposed to a deal for certain select popular distros, much like the Firefox trademark bullcrap) if jpackage.org can finally ship a binary rpm.

  • TeX (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ambush Commander (871525) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @04:00PM (#15345318)
    I think that the reason Java doesn't want forking is to make sure that a program one person writes will always work on all Java interpreters. Sounds familiar to Knuth's concepts about TeX. The way they achieved it was by prohibiting new derivatives from being released under the same name (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#License [wikipedia.org]) and those using TeX in their name must pass a rigorous test suite. The license is not GPL compatible, but perhaps Java could adopt something similar?
  • The freedom to fork the Linux kernel has resulted in varieties of Linux running on all sorts of platforms, including many that that the mainstream kernel development team has absolutely no interest in.

    That's the beauty of being able to fork the code -- people can use it as the basis for scratching their own itch.

    The freedom to fork Linux distributions has resulted in something that most markets identify as "competition", something which the x86 desktop OS market hasn't seen in some time.

    In spite of Sun's touching concerns, this can actually be a healthy situation, and usually is.

  • good move (Score:3, Insightful)

    by unk1911 (250141) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @05:10PM (#15345961) Homepage
    i think this is a great idea. one of my biggest annoyances with writing java apps has been that if i ever wanted to release my programs and didn't want to make any assumptions about my users (mainly that they had any version of java already installed on their system let a lone a level of java that matched my own level) i would have to deploy a very heavy 50MB JRE with my 100K app... i think with the opening of the java source, much like in the linux world, someone will repackage the JRE and just keep the very bare-bones essentials so that instead of deploying a 50MB+100K apps i can deploy a 5MB+100k app.

    --
    http://unk1911.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

    • Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @03:01PM (#15344708) Journal
      Java offers nothing useful or exciting compared to what's out there.

      What else is *out there*? c,c++,C#, Visual Basic, Python? If your going to tell me its terrible, I certainly understand that point of view, please at least tell me what you cosider to be better and what applications you have in mind. Just telling me its bad and not good for much, doesn't help much.

      Any suggustions to what is out ther that holds such great advantages to Java?

        • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

          by AKAImBatman (238306) * <akaimbatman.gmail@com> on Tuesday May 16 2006, @05:23PM (#15346066) Homepage Journal
          Well, for one thing, it is slower than native code.

          Patently false. [blogs.com] It has been false for years now. Ever since Chris Rijk published his earth shattering [aceshardware.com] benchmarks. (More recent benchmarks here [improve-technologies.com].)

          It's now down to the skill of the programmer. A good programmer will write speedy code, and a bad programmer will write garbage. Who'da'thunk?

          For another, its garbage collection has a tendency to result in really bad performance stalls

          When was the last time you used Java? 1.1? The modern hotspot JVM uses a generational collector which should NEVER stall during runtime unless it begins running into memory pressure. Go try this game [javaunlimited.net] and tell us how many stalls you see. If you think that's too "simple", try this one [wurmonline.com].

          For another, its portability has been hampered by not fully supporting interesting OS features, which means that there are all these OS-specific extensions to add things like audio support,

          Is there something wrong with the javax.sound packages? I'm REALLY thinking that you haven't tried Java since 1.1.

          They don't integrate well with other apps, don't do a good job of supporting OS services, etc.

          Psst! [java.net]

          Finally, Java makes it hard to add debug functionality into your code without a performance hit.

          That's just a weak argument. Debugging info can really screw up a codebase and should be removed after debugging. But if you're wedded to the idea, get one of the three billion preprocessors [google.com] that are available.

          The bottom line is that pretty much any compiled language has great advantages over Java.

          The bottom line is that you haven't used Java since the days of 1.1, but you feel that you're fully qualified to make statements about a platform you know nothing about. Whether you intend to or not, you are trolling, sir. So I would ask you to stop spreading FUD by not commenting on Java until you are again familiar with the platform.

            • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

              by owlstead (636356)
              "It is provably true. The proof is trivial, in fact. Java is non-native bytecode. Therefore, at some point in time, that bytecode must be translated. This takes time."

              That may be, but if you acquire information while the code is running, then you may be able to speed things up a bit. Normally, natively compiled code does not do that. Besides that, this is all theoratically speaking. The same argument was used against C: anything you did should be slower than assembly, no? It turned out that compilers won fr
    • More likely, Sun will make the source CDDL [sun.com] like the rest of their free-software (and hardware [sun.com] :) ) offerings
      • Actually, that could be a good enough reason for them to release it GPL, and have a dual license option for some other Sun licenses.

        However, I think they are more worried about Eclipse than MS at this point, and I doubt Eclipse would shy away from forking a GPL Java. Sun doesn't want the source of forks to be available for them to use - they want no forks to begin with. They are control freaks when it comes to their projects.

        Really it'll come down to IBM and Sun working out some arrangement where the code
    • Sure, it could be nice, but do you really think that a great number of amazing programmers would eagerly step up and immediately start to maintain and improve Java? And in that doing a better job than Sun & JCP is doing right now? Don't think so...

      Absolutely. We're not just talking about volunteers here. There are a lot of companies out there with a lot invested in Java. I'm sure they would love to have the opportunity to improve the core platform. Sun would still be involved in the maintenance, no do

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