Netbeans 6 Dual-Licensed Under GPLv2, CDDL

Lally Singh writes "Interested in the new Netbeans 6, but didn't trust Sun's (already OSI-approved) CDDL? Sun just Dual-Licensed it under the GPL (v2) with Classpath Exception. Keep your karmic license purity and mix in all the (now compatible) GPL code you want. If you've been using Eclipse, Netbeans 6 is really worth a look. Lean, well-featured, and fast."

Only matters for Netbeans mods and add-ons, right?

[timeOday (582209)]

I don't think the Netbeans license ever made any claim on software developed within NetBeans, did it?

Re:Only matters for Netbeans mods and add-ons, rig

[bazald (886779)]

Right, NetBeans, like GCC, never imposed any license restrictions on the code generated.

Re:

[Architect_sasyr (938685)]

What program does? I'd not be surprised to find some of the .NET code generators did... I've just never heard of a program in use which does... honest question, not an attempt at humour.

Re:Only matters for Netbeans mods and add-ons, rig

[_merlin (160982)]

Visual Basic (pre .NET) and RealBasic place restrictions on the generated code, because the distribution terms have to be compatible with the distribution terms on the runtime engine that the executables will require.

Re:

[AuMatar (183847)]

At one time, Visual Studio licenses said you couldn't use them to write a competing compiler. No idea if that has been removed or not.

citation required {{fact}}

[Burb (620144)]

I'd like to see proof of that one way or the other. There was a lot of discussion in the early days of Mono and Portable.NET about whether it would be problematic to write a C# compiler in C# because it would need the MS compiler to bootstrap. Furthermore, you'd need to distinuish between Microsoft's compiler and runtime (free as in beer) and Visual Studio (mine's a pint). Without being rude to the original post, this seems like it originated in FUD. I have no vested interest, I'm just asking.

Tried it

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried it, but it still runs like ass. It's sad that a great platform like Java has such a bad rep because of one toolkit (Swing).

I'm developing an app in Java, using the JOGL opengl bindings and it performs fantastically. Netbeans, on the other hand, runs like I have it on a 486, not a quad core Q6600 Intel processor.

I don't know how people compare Netbeans to Eclipse, actually feels native (because it IS native) and runs snappy as hell. Not only that, but Eclipse is great for python, javascript, c/c++

Re:

[DAldredge (2353)]

How long does it take to start on your Q6600?

Re:

[siddesu (698447)]

around 25-30 seconds on a mobile pentium @ 1.5GHz (and 1GB RAM).
why?

Re:

[Lally Singh (3427)]

This was NS 6? Both it and Eclipse take a bit to start up (A 2GB Macbook Pro), but NB doesn't lag as badly as Eclipse when I use it.

I've been using Eclipse for some time, but it's been getting on my nerves with speed/crash-happiness/bugginess. NB's treating me better these days.

OTOH, maybe Eclipse is *really* focusing on the Win32 experience, and the Mac experience is just crappy?

Re:

[try_anything (880404)]

I'm using Eclipse to develop an RCP app. The Eclipse platform provides a lot of functionality to build on, and aside from a slow start-up, it doesn't cause any sluggishness or instability in my app.

The Eclipse IDE, on the other hand, is infuriating. I have currently have workspaces named 2007-10-04, 2007-10-11, 2007-10-19, 2007-10-21, and 2007-10-25 because that's how often Eclipse irretrievably corrupts my workspaces. I've become so used to it that instead of deleting and replacing the corrupted workspa

Re:

[AdamInParadise (257888)]

I've been using Eclipse for thousands of hours, all the way back to Eclipse 2.0. I've never seen Eclipse corrupt its workspace. However, I've seen lots of badly-written plugins that do manage to mangle their own configuration files.

Are you sure that your issues at coming from Eclipse?

Re:Tried it

[CastrTroy (595695)]

But see, that's what happens when your IDE doesn't include any features, and actually requires plug-ins for some basic tasks. A few years ago, I tried to used Eclipse to do up a quick little Java app with a GUI. Apparently, at the time, you could either hand code your GUI or install some buggy plugin that did the job OK, but not quite that well. Or if you used Netbeans, then the drag-and-drop GUI designer was included as a core part of the IDE. IDEs as far as I'm concerned need a lot of functionality, because of their purpose. If their purpose was just typing code, then we could all just settle for notepad, but those who have used a good IDE know that they are so much more than that. So they should include a lot of features as core components that are well tested and well supported, because relying on third party plugins for things that should be core components leads to a very unstable program.

Re:Tried it

[greg1104 (461138)]

OTOH, maybe Eclipse is *really* focusing on the Win32 experience, and the Mac experience is just crappy?

It runs fine on both Win32 and Linux, but yes the Mac experience is crappy. Apple likes to brag [apple.com] about their Java support, but the OS X support for the SWT features needed to fully support Eclipse is spotty. Check out how long the infamous SWT_AWT not implemented [eclipse.org] bug took for them to resolve. That was a showstopper for a variety of Eclipse plug-ins, and it was open from 6/15/2004 to 4/20/2006. Things are better now, but there's still a subset of SWT_AWT not implemented that breaks some tools, like parts of the fairly popular MyEclipse: see SWT_AWT.new_Shell() unimplemented [eclipse.org] for that dreary mess, which well over a year old now.

While these specific bugs are unlikely to be the sources of your crashes etc., every time I read up on the state of Eclipse+Mac OS X I find myself distrusting that combination; the base platform seems unstable, and as you can see from these two the bugs that are found can sit for years before being fixed. Recent moves from Apple like pulling Java 6 from Leopard [symphonious.net] aren't comforting either.

Re:Tried it

[jma05 (897351)]

> runs like I have it on a 486, not a quad core Q6600 Intel processor.

While Netbeans is not winning any performance awards, its performance is quite acceptable. I upgraded my processor only because I was unhappy with Netbeans performance. But mine should still be 3 times slower than a Q6600 and I think the performance is OK now. Perhaps there is something wrong with your VM memory settings or such?

> I don't know how people compare Netbeans to Eclipse, actually feels native (because it IS native) and runs snappy as hell.

The primary reason is that Netbeans has better out of the box support for Java standard frameworks. Swing and J2EE tools are still ahead of Eclipse offerings. If you can, use both. But if you are using a code only app such as your JOGL project, Netbeans does not offer a whole lot.

> Not only that, but Eclipse is great for python, javascript, c/c++ and many, many other non-java technologies.

Netbeans is catching up with all that and exposes a rich client framework just like Eclipse.

Re:Tried it

[Lally Singh (3427)]

NB's ability to use your normal build system (ant or maven) as it's project file is what sold me. Oh, and I don't have to have this directory structure anymore:

eclipse
- 3.3
  - 1
  - 2
  - 3

Where each one is an installed copy of eclipse, and the lower numbered ones are copies that have fried themselves.

*And* a decent profiler built in :-)

Re:

[Call Me Black Cloud (616282)]

You tried NB 6? I run it on an average P4 with HT machine and it runs great. Our team is split 50/50 between NB and Eclipse and from what I've experienced NB not only runs better but is an easier app to use (my last project required we all use Eclipse so I'm very familiar with it).

Re:

[krelian (525362)]

I am really trying to like NB but the fact that on a windows box it take 8 seconds to open the file dialog makes me crazy.

Re:

[Bert64 (520050)]

Wow aren't Apple behind the curve, Microsoft deprecated Java back in 2001 with XP!

differences?

[bwy (726112)]

At this point, Eclipse is a mature, stable and feature-rich IDE with a healthy plugin community to boot.

For someone who has been using it for years (I switched from IDEA a while back), it would take a lot to cause me to switch at this point. Developers end up making a pretty big investment in fine tuning an IDE for complex development environments, and there are so many little details around every corner that take time to uncover and learn.

I should qualify this by saying that I'm perfectly able to s

Re:

[jeevesbond (1066726)]

For someone who has been using it for years (I switched from IDEA a while back), it would take a lot to cause me to switch at this point. Developers end up making a pretty big investment in fine tuning an IDE for complex development environments, and there are so many little details around every corner that take time to uncover and learn.

It's probably not for you then! Having run both the big advantage of Netbeans is that it's smaller and faster than Eclipse. As someone just starting out with Java Netbea

Re:

[Spikeles (972972)]

Personally my editor for everything textual is Vim

Then you would love this [sourceforge.net] and this [satokar.com]

it's the best Ruby IDE there is

[crayz (1056)]

The Netbeans 6 dev/beta releases have been quickly becoming the best Ruby/Rails IDE, bar none. Used to be Eclipse/RadRails for Windows/Linux, and Textmate for Mac. Netbeans has completely blown Eclipse out of the water for Ruby development as Aptana+RadRails has stagnated. Textmate isn't really an IDE to begin with, it's quite a unique and useful text editor. But the pace and quality of Netbeans Ruby support would be very tough to match, so even many hardcore Textmate Mac users have switched to Netbeans

Along with JRuby and Glassfish Rails, Netbeans is proving that Sun is dead serious about being the best Ruby game in town. They've got competitors in all three areas, but they are quickly becoming a major force in the Ruby community

Re:

[MemoryDragon (544441)]

It depends on the toolchain, bare eclipse is best you can get for java editing second to none. (Well Intellij is also very good but that is a different league) but if you are forced to use the WTP, then Eclipse becomes a major pain. An example, a colleque of mine was using Eclipse he had to move up to Eclipse 3.3. I recommended Europa to him because he was using parts of the toolchain anyway, after Eclipse suddenly refused to given him code insight, he reverted back. Problems like this are myriad with the W

GUI Builder

[rpp3po (641313)]

Netbeans is very stable and mature platform. There's nothing to bitch about. Eclipse on the other hand offers much more comfort concerning plain editing and refactoring tasks. Additionally it is part of a much more attractive ecosystem.

Still there is one thing where Netbeans beats every other Java IDE easily: The matisse GUI builder is really fun to work with! For Java there's nothing even close. And for that alone Netbeans has a very well founded raison d'être. If it's GPL now, lets wait and see how long it takes for Eclipse to absorb that great tool. There's already a commercial port for MyEclipse, but it's not free or usable on vanilla Eclipse, yet.

i quite like it...

[pjr.cc (760528)]

Well, i like netbeans 5.5.1 anyway. When i downloaded 6 (a little while ago, i think it was m2 or something?) i was most annoyed with the lack of ability to develop c/c++ apps (or at least, the extensions from 5.5.1 hadnt been moved across yet).

Having said that, i only use it for c/c++. I'd use it for php if it had a plugin worth using. I used to use eclipse for c/c++/php but these days i use gleany for php. I used to like eclipse, but eventually i just got annoyed with it and retired it.

Re:

[JonLatane (750195)]

Well, if you take ten seconds to look at the download page [netbeans.org] for NetBeans, you'll notice not only have C/C++ tools been moved, but they've got convenient packages for your needs.

To quote John Carmack

[boyter (964910)]

"When text editing is less then instant on a 3ghz machine you know something is very very wrong..."

Re:To quote John Carmack

[eviltypeguy (521224)]

If it was just text editing and not code hinting, folding, anti-aliasing, line counting, syntax checking, and a bunch of other things all at the same time -- I might agree with that. However, in this case, I think you're misusing John's quote.

Re:

[DMUTPeregrine (612791)]

I'm pretty sure I can do all that in EMACS, and that isn't slow (anymore.) So if it is slow, there is a problem.

Netbeans...

[ForumTroll (900233)]

Lean, well-featured, and fast.

Netbeans isn't even remotely close to being lean or fast. I downloaded Netbeans 6 Beta 2 a few days ago, and it's still one of the slowest applications I've ever used. Additionally, Swing still looks terrible, doesn't fit in with the desktop, and has horrible font rendering.

Careful there. . .

[ookabooka (731013)]

If you've been using Eclipse, Netbeans 6 is really worth a look.

Also, if you've been using emacs, vim is worth a look. Vim is lean, well-featured, and fast.

Why Netbeans vs Eclipse?

[el_chupanegre (1052384)]

I don't seem to get why anyone needs to pick one or the other.

Personally, for the last 3 years I've been using Eclipse 3.x and Netbeans 5.x. I can see the benefits of each, and each annoys me in it's own seperate ways.

For example, in Eclipse, why can't I add an external folder to the classpath without stupid variables? Why only a jar? In Netbeans there isn't a distinction.

To me though, Netbeans just feels alot clunkier. Once I have everything set up in Eclipse, I'm definitely more productive, with one caveat. The GUI builder in Netbeans is fantastic, it really is. Nothing free that the Eclipse world offers even comes close to competing with it. I usually do most code in Eclipse, make the GUI in Netbeans and import that into Eclipse.

So I say, why pick one over the other? You need more than one tool to build a house, why not use as many as you like to build your software?

new Netbeans 6 beta 2 has great Ruby support

[MarkWatson (189759)]

I used to do most of my Ruby and Ruby on Rails coding using TextMate but I have switched to using NetBeans. Beta 2 understands Ruby code well enough for (mostly) meaningful code completions and having popup documentation for the standard classes is useful. The integration of the "fast debugger" is also handy. Rails support is also very good. I usually use native (Matz C) Ruby, but NetBeans supports JRuby also. BTW, I used to use Common Lisp, Ruby, and Java about equally in my work, but recently I have been living with the Ruby performance hit and I am starting to use Ruby for just about everything that I do.

Re:

[4D6963 (933028)]

Err, nevermind, the answer's in TFA (people choose the license they want) :-/

Re:Dual license?

[eht (8912)]

If it's your code you can license it however you want, for example MySQL is dual licensed under both the GPL and a Commercial license. Anyone can download the GPL version make their modifications and as long as they follow the GPL redistribute according to the GPl, or if they license the commercial version for a fee from MySQL AB they can basically release a closed source version all closed up.

If you were to dual license your code under the GPL and BSD people who wanted to redistribute modified code could follow either one they wanted, with BSD being one of the avaible choices they could close it up a lot if they so desired.

Re:

[4D6963 (933028)]

So with dual licensing you can cover two different cases, right? But can you make it conditional, like, specify in your license statement that depending on certain conditions license A applies and else license B applies?

Re:Dual license?

[Morkano (786068)]

You can licence your code however you want, but if you make it conditional like that you could very easily make it incompatible with the licences they're based on, or open up loop holes, or make it not hold up in court or whatever.

The way they do it for MySQL and others is when you get it, only one licence applies. You choose which one you want to apply, but the choice of the commercial licence means you have to give them money. They're just giving you the ability to sell a product and keep the source closed if you're willing to pay for it.

Re:Dual license?

[AVee (557523)]

As said above, you can perfectly do that (within the limits of the law), if it's your code, you get to set the terms. However, such a scenario is not dual-licensing, it's creting a wholly new license (which happens to be based on two other licenses). That very different from dual-licensing where the recieving party get to choose between the licenses. It also is likely very to create a license which is incompatible with both the licenses it is based on.

Re:Dual license?

[NevarMore (248971)]

In your example, the code derived from it has to be compatible with the GPL license OR the BSD license. Once code is licensed under one or the other its usually hard to go back, but one has to make a choice up front about it.

For example I can take some code I write and release it under GPL and my own for pay license. If someone pays for a copy they and I have to abide by my paid-license, if someone downloads it then they can do things with it as allowed by the GPL. This allows me to be flexible and support the needs of buisnesses (and pay my bills) while still supporting the community.

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

I don't think the user switching licenses later is as big of a problem as you suggest though maybe you mean something else. I don't think a developer would want to make it hard to move from a GPL to commercial license, though maybe want to discourage moving from commercial to GPL. It might be tough if you end up mixing the code from other sources, that's the only thing I can think of, but that's quite problematic anyway. I think the original intent was to allow the developer sell support for the app rath

They wouldn't even for a single license

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL is not "viral". You can use it with non-GPLed code (and it doesn't change the
license on that code) as long as that code doesn't have any restrictions which aren't
in the GPL. The "viral"ness of the GPL is that you can't redistribute it under any other
terms -- including if you make derivative works and distribute those.

The FSF also takes an expansive view toward derivative works of their own software, so
that a program linked with their code, but not otherwise including it, would create a new
work cov

Re:

[4D6963 (933028)]

In this case, instead of forking, couldn't you just put certain parts of your code under the GPL license, and put the parts of the code you want to let companies use and close under the BSD license?

Re:Sun isn't committed to GPL

[nuzak (959558)]

Yeah I know it just sucks that Sun gives away millions of man-hours under the GPL but not every single last line of code they ever wrote. I mean who the hell do they think you are by not dedicating every resource they have to the service of free software instead of themselves?

Re:Sun isn't committed to GPL

[bladesjester (774793)]

As nice as Sun makes it sound, they really aren't fully committed to the GPL. They only seem to use the GPL when it suits them

A company using a license only when it makes sense to do so? How terrible!

If Sun was truly committed to free software, they would use the GPL on everything because in a true free software space it doesn't matter if your customers mix-and-match the pieces

Let's get real here, folks. Making some of your software available as open source does not mean that you should have to make *everything* you create open source. I certainly don't. Some things are open source (all of the ones on my site at the moment are GPLv2 because I loathe the moral crusade the fanatic otherwise known as RMS is trying to get the world to join in with v3); some things are commercial.

I get so sick and tired of the GPL fanboys who think that everything else is evil. The people who own the code get to decide what they want to do with it, not you. Deal with it.

If they want to give it away, be happy that you got something new to use or play with. If they want to sell it, either buy it or don't, but for the love of everything decent, stop bitching about the fact that not everything is released under your favorite license.

I've known a lot of developers that have stopped writing open source software because they got sick and tired of dealing with the fact that no matter what they released, people bitched at them because it wasn't "free enough" or because not *ALL* of their software was open source.

The whole of the world doesn't want to be Stallman followers and, to be honest, I view that as a very very good thing because the man is off his rocker.

Re:

[stinerman (812158)]

This is coming from someone who is actually an advocate of open source and has been a voice for it.

Then there is no doubt that you wouldn't get along with Stallman. Stallman doesn't do "open source"; he does "free software". Open source emphasizes the business and practical aspects of being able to see, reuse, and redistribute code. Free software is about ethics.

RMS has a nice quote relating open source and free software:

"The GNU GPL makes sense in terms of its purpose: freedom and social solidarity. Try

Re:

[Vexorian (959249)]

Lately even MS' anti GPL and pro software patents poison is OSI approved, though...

Re:

[eviltypeguy (521224)]

interesting. Sun's aware of GPL v3 and what it means (eg, they have discussed licensing open solaris as GPL v3 to prevent code from being used by linux). I'm guessing they don't want to give up their patents just yet. Don't forget they paid SCO.

Bzzzt. Wrong. The GPLv2 has an implicit patent license; the GPLv3 has an explicit; there is not really a large difference as far as licensing patents that go with the code is concerned. In Sun's case, it would be the same.

Also, they didn't "pay sco" in the way you ar

Re:In Iran

[Macrat (638047)]

Sun's policy?

Sun is a US company and by US law, Sun is not allowed to export to restricted countries.

Re:

[MemoryDragon (544441)]

Depends on where your main focus is, Netbeans 6 is really exciting full ruby/rails tooling within the ide, the visual webpack simply is fantastic for small webapps and the integrated jpa support also is not too shabby. I have been using MyEclipse for years, but Netbeans slowly with every release becomes more and more a strong competitor to the Eclipse area, also mainly due to the fact that if you want something decent in eclipse you have to pay, and even then you run into the myriads of bugs the WTP is. WTP