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Open source Java?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun May 15, 2005 03:55 PM
from the open-source-that-wakes-you-up-in-the-morning dept.
from the open-source-that-wakes-you-up-in-the-morning dept.
Bruce writes "Newsforge is reporting that Java 2 Standard Edition, may soon be set free of Sun Microsystems' notoriously complicated licensing. A group of 12 Apache developers have put together a proposal called Harmony. The proposal appeared as a simple project call last Friday on an Apache incubator mailing list. It would make this new, built-from-the-ground-up version of Java available under the Apache 2.0 free software license. And it's causing quite a stir in the Java community, especially since respected Sun frontmen Tim Bray, Simon Phipps, and Graham Hamilton have given the project their blessing. As yet there has been no reaction from Dr. Java, James Gosling himself, who is in Brazil talking to developers. In a FAQ on the Apache site, Harmony project leader Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote: 'We believe that there is broad community interest in coming together to create and use an open source, compatible implementation of J2SE 5, the latest version of the Java 2 Standard Edition specification. While the Java Community Process has allowed open source implementations of JSRs for a few years now, Java 5 is the first of the J2SE specs that we are able to do due to licensing reasons.'"
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Java To Be Opened For Christmas? 243 comments
MBCook writes "At the Oracle OpenWorld conference, Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced on Wednesday morning that Java would be opened within 30-60 days, which would would mean about Christmas Day at the latest. Sun first announced they would do this back in May at JavaOne but didn't give a date. We've seen rumblings before on this topic. Schwartz also commented on the companies Sun Fire servers, Sun's relationship with Oracle, and general trends."
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I was under the impression... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I was under the impression... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I was under the impression... (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, first Blackdown is 100%. It's not an open source VM. It's a port of Sun's.
Kaffe and GCJ haven't stopped anywhere. Both are using the same class library (GNU Classpath).
Does this [wildebeest.org] look like 'stopping'?
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Re:I was under the impression... (Score:5, Informative)
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Dupes Ahoy! (Score:5, Informative)
I liked this story better when it was posted a week ago [slashdot.org].
C'mon, "editors". This has to be getting embarrassing. Right?
Not Embarassing (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't wait for Java to be fully open source so I can gut it and re-release it how I would like to see it written. Can't wait.
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gcj and the new license wars (Score:5, Interesting)
Why start from scratch? It this simply because the Apache folks don't like the GPL?
Re:gcj and the new license wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it hasn't been decided if they will start from scratch yet. They might adopt an existing VM. They might adopt the GNU Classpath class library.
The discussions on checking up the inevitable licensing issues are already underway.
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Re:gcj and the new license wars (Score:5, Insightful)
GPL and Apache licenses aren't quite compatible.
Since the GPL doesnt allow for distribution of code under any other license, then its not compatable with any other license. Other licenses are compatable with it, but its most certainly not a two way thing.Sometimes different ideologies foster competition, just as Firefox has forced MS to reopen development on IE 7, the GPL license forces people with more broader ideologies to create competitors to GPLed projects.
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Quite a stir? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a home-made a storm in a teacup. There is already an initiative to create a free Java: GNU GJC. And no one cares about it. The Apache people are just running some propaganda now, but it will be forgotten in a few weeks.
Java's biggest hole is in the embedded market. (Score:5, Interesting)
What typically happens is that some company has a neat idea for an embedded device. But they quickly find that the Java applications they want there won't fly because Java isn't supported on the hardware they were planning to use. They either have to fall back to a different CPU (which is usually more expensive), or pay a lot just to put Java on the CPU. Or go with C/C++ for their applications.
x86 and PPC are simply not the entire embedded world. There are many other superb (and cheaper) solutions out there, in this space. And no, Java support is far from prevalent on MIPS processors, despite what MIPS might try to claim. I know, as I've been there.
Please keep in mind that there are far more embedded CPUs around than there are PCs or Servers. So there is a clear need for Java, if it were available in this space. But it's not. gcc however, usually is, fortunately.
If Java were indeed Open Sourced, it just might be as popular as gcc is in the embedded space. Until then, people in the embedded space have far more flexibility by going with C/C++ than with Java.
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Dupe, and why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dupe, and why? (Score:5, Insightful)
To produce such a thing, we need a community of competent people committed to that goal. This is what other Open Source Java projects lack.
To get such community going, one needs to communicate in a certain manner. This is what the Harmony people are now doing. The strenght of this project is, to me, that it has both excellent technical competence and competence in community management and in setting and achieving goals in a reliable manner.
This attempt is getting so much attention because senior people who understand that there is more to life than mere technical details pay attention when people who have a track record in producing results, speak.
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Helping out current Java Open Source projects? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bringing open source Java runtimes to fruition should be an important step for open source java projects that are currently held back from entering distributions and packages because of this requirement. Also the requirement of Sun Java to use Java 5 on Linux (this situation may have changed..) would be a good thing to challenge.
Having such a fundamental and established organization like the Apache project behind the effort should really aid & help to posture this effort within the wider open-source community.
Interesting name "Harmony" (Score:4, Insightful)
Odd how history DOES repeat itself
Re:Interesting name "Harmony" (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
And when they finally look at doing so, all I see people saying are things like "We already have GJC, you fuckers... we don't need you anymore".
I just don't get it.
Critical thinking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's get real, folks. Critical thinking isn't that difficult.
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Re:Critical thinking... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:I see a case of "redundancy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Scenario 1: You as an end user wouldn't have to. It would be included with your operating system, which is not currently the case. If you have to seek one out you would probably seek out Sun's, but if your Linux distro came with Apache's you would just use it unless it was unsuitable in some way.
Scenario 2: You develop Java apps. Right now you have to direct end users to another website (Sun's) and follow instructions found there to download and install Java. You could instead offer an install package that already includes Harmony.
Scenario 3: You want to use Java on an unsupported machine. Right now you don't really have many options for running Java apps on PocketPCs, for example (Like my Jornada 568). An Open Source JVM would almost certainly be ported a wide variety of platforms (considering how many platforms have reimplementations like Waba attempted for them the demand is obviously there).
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Re:Zzzzzz. Wake me up (Score:5, Insightful)
The other problem is that only platforms that are directly important to Sun or IBM get full featured Java environments. Java on PowerPC Linux is still substandard. IBM makes a JVM availiable but you have to jump through hoops even as an end user to get it and you still don't have a browser plugin. An Open Source Java would be available on just about all platforms with equal functionality.
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Re:Zzzzzz. Wake me up (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever tried running Java on *BSD? It works to some extent, but it isn't pretty. Having an open implementation could mean that Java and Java Server Pages would become more widely accepted in servers running open systems.
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Re:Possibly poor foresight. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Possibly poor foresight. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Apache is. Many many more companies run Linux as a free way to run Apache than use Apache only because the chose Linux.
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Re:"blessing" doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to tender a vote for "It's sheer Brobdingnagian size". Individually, each individual function of an API is something you could probably assign a college student to do, but taken together, to re-implement something like Java (which, like "Perl" or "Python" and unlike old-style "C" or ECMAScript, also implies a fairly sizable standard library) is just damned hard.
And as one lil' open source developer, I can't work up much excitement about re-implementing a language spec. (Full disclosure, I hate Java, but that statement is generally true; I can't think of any language I'd care to donate my time towards re-implementing.) I can't imagine this helps the developer pool. (Obviously this is not true of everyone, if you think I just claimed otherwise please learn to read what people say, not what you think they said. I'm just saying that I doubt this gets many people's blood pumping in a way that Yet Another Web Framework or YA MP3 Player seems to.)
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