Sun to Release Java Source Code 349
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."
Misleading Headline (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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.
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:2)
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:3, Insightful)
Jedidiah.
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Misleading Headline (Score:2)
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:2)
Why? Open source does not imply no trademarking. Look at RedHat for a good example. As this post [slashdot.org] said, Sun can make it so only compatible VMs can call themselves "Java". Isn't that THE ideal solution? Why don't people spend more time discussing this instead of yelling "OMG open source java evil nonononono!!!!" all the time?
IBM? Microsoft? (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, MS may be as evil as they ever were, but the whole "they'll fork Java" thing is so 1990s. Java is (a) very very solidly entrenched in its serverware and small cross platform app niche (b) a competitor to their flagship C#, so the last thing they want is draw people back to Java, of any fork or species.
Microsoft's probable response
Re:IBM? Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the last thing Microsoft wants to do right now is to put "lots of bugs == bad" into people's minds.
Re:A Microsoft fork can eventually kill java (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:2)
See for example the GFDL and the Artistic License for clauses restricting the naming of derivative works, and the BSD license for a clause restricting "endorsement".
Besides which, unless a license specifically makes itself "incompatible" with trademarking, then the following case will generally hold: if the license would grant you the right to distribute a modified version, but a trademark prevents you from distributing it under a given name, then the li
Re:Try the Artistic License? (Score:2)
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:3, Funny)
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)
Jedidiah.
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not talking about a complete rewrite of a language like they did with
As far as IBM goes they still own a lions share of the server market and could easily
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:2)
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:5, Informative)
WindBourne! I'm shocked to hear such garbage from you!
Current "Stable" JVM - <= 1.5 [sun.com] (SCSL)
"Unstable" JVM Branch - 1.6 [java.net] (JRL)
Every, (and I do mean every) story on Java here on Slashdot has contained one of those two links. Most of them contain BOTH. Why? Because the trolls come out in force. The fact that you didn't take the time to look into the matter (I believe I suggested Googling for it) is disappointing and disheartening.
Re:Mea culpa. (Score:3, Informative)
If you have a problem with the SCSL license, fine. If you have a problem with the JRL license, fine. But to claim that Sun hasn't released the source code? That's just frustrating.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose you do realise that one of the most important deployment platforms for J2EE is Windows Server? You are confusing 'server operating systems' with 'software deployed on those operating systems'.
And of course we don't need to discuss the desktop.
Where Swing has a bigger presence than Webforms.
Java was nev
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:2)
There are ways to minimize forking. For example, a license could require modifications be distinct from the original (ei. patching). The QPL license does this. But a far easier way is to simply trademark the name (already done), and only permit it to be used on the original (or approved) code bases.
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:2)
Let it fork, it can't POSSIBLY get any worse.
Its Simple (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Its Simple (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Its Simple (Score:2)
-matthew
Re:Its Simple (Score:2)
Re:Its Simple (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Its Simple (Score:2, Funny)
sweet...
Less talkin' more openin' (Score:2, Insightful)
I know, I know, Sun's afraid that Eclipse is going to... well eclipse the sun, but c'mon! make it GPL, retain the trademark and you won't believe the explosion in Java coding you'll see!
GPL'ing java would be bad... (Score:2)
But GPL'ing it would create the requirement that every project that used it would also have to be GPL'd because at runtime everything links to its runtime environment.
Which would make the commercial use of Java impractical.
I can't think of a faster way to kill it that to put the GPL on it.
Re:GPL'ing java would be bad... (Score:2, Interesting)
Really? You're saying that for applications which link to the Java class libraries, they'll have to be GPL'd as well? I thought that the GPL had an exception for "links-to" versus "extends" or "based-upon."
Re:GPL'ing java would be bad... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GPL'ing java would be bad... (Score:2)
No it doesn't. That's why Stallman himself made glibc LGPL. It's also why you see very few commercial Qt applications ( gtk+ is LGPL, Qt is essentially GPL unless you pay for it)
Re:GPL'ing java would be bad... (Score:2)
*slaps forehead*
Of course - you're completey correct.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:GPL'ing java would be bad... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:GPL'ing java would be bad... (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Less talkin' more openin' (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't prevent it. (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess it doesn't *have* to happen, but there seem to be more than enough people that want to take Java away from Sun that it's inevitable.
Re:You can't prevent it. (Score:2)
But that's already potentially happening; there are OSS Java implementations already, the only guarantee of consistency with Sun's standard is the attention to detail of the OSS community. Any threat Sun faces from forking its code (whe
C'mon Jeanie! *Please* get back in your bottle! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:C'mon Jeanie! *Please* get back in your bottle! (Score:3, Insightful)
Or another option is to not piss off contributors by rejecting suggestions and otherwise being resistent to change. Nobody is going to bother forking if Sun remains responsive to the community.
-matthew
Re:C'mon Jeanie! *Please* get back in your bottle! (Score:2)
There is demand for a Free implementation of Java and its standard libraries. One way or another, it will happen. The question is, how is it going to happen?
One way is for Sun to keep a tight grasp on Java and not open-source their implementation. That means a from-scratch implementation has to be written.
Another way is for Sun to open-source their implementation. That way, alternative implementations don't need to be written.
The question is; which do you think will produce most divergence? A
How to prevent forking and fragmentation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How to prevent forking and fragmentation (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:How to prevent forking and fragmentation (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
Trademark usage. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Trademark usage. (Score:2)
One thing that limits the ability of Sun to do this is the existence of "fair use" in trademark law, which
Re:Trademark usage. (Score:2)
What they fail to realize is that once they let the source code go, there is no way to prevent anything at all. That's what freedom is about. Or is it that they think they can put it "partially" in the public domain and still retain some control?
Sorry Sun, it's all or nothing here.
Re:Trademark usage. (Score:2)
You want to prevent forking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at Perl. It's open source, and hasn't really forked. It has, however, evolved.
"Look at Perl." (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You want to prevent forking? (Score:3, Insightful)
Making Java open source, in the sense of a GPL or similar license, will kill Java.
Re:You want to prevent forking? (Score:2)
Further, having the gold-standard implementation open to the community might present Java with a competitive advantage over
Re:You want to prevent forking? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:You want to prevent forking? (Score:2)
Re:You want to prevent forking? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
You can only use the term "Java" if you pass tests (Score:5, Insightful)
This may not be a GPL license, but that's alright.
Is there any reason why such an approach wouldn't work?
Re:You can only use the term "Java" if you pass te (Score:2, Insightful)
That approach works great. That's the license they already have.
Re:You can only use the term "Java" if you pass te (Score:3, Insightful)
That is, come up with a new implementation that will become more popular than the original.
Re:You can only use the term "Java" if you pass te (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Just don't break it, please (Score:3, Funny)
The Media Is Retarded (Score:2)
Re:The Media Is Retarded (Score:2, Interesting)
How quickly people forget what Microsoft tried to do to Java. The only thing that saved Java was it license agreement.
Why is this a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
(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.
Re:Why is this a surprise? (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry, that name just begs for a Spaceballs reference.
okok, but why (Score:2)
How? Three words: (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, there's a reason it's so popular. It ensures that noone can hijack the project and the source code will be legitimately free. You will make the most people happy with your decision if you go that route. Anything else will be seen as hedging your bets.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
When and If this happens... (Score:2)
I'd say that this is a classic situation where Java will not be the only thing worth studying. Once the license is decided and the code is even more out there for even more possibilities will we see IBM do even more with it? Will we see schools teach more Java because it has passed open source muster? Will this help it gain market share? Force M$ to open its languages? What about a new free Delphi?
I hope everyone, i
YES (Score:3, Funny)
In other news.. (Score:4, Funny)
Open Source? Nah... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't care one bit about Sun Java as open source. 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...
However, there is one thing Sun could do... one very important thing: remove the stupid click-through license on downloading the Java source-code. That one thing would mean that the BSD portstree or Gentoo
Re:Open Source? Nah... (Score:3, Interesting)
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
At this late date, who cares. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:At this late date, who cares. (Score:2)
See here [opensolaris.org] for a credible precedent.
TeX (Score:4, Informative)
Still has Unacceptable Terms! (Score:2)
Why is Linux forking considered a bad thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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)
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
Re:Not such big news after all... (Score:2)
For instance, if one knows exactly how Java works, one should be able to make code intended for a Java VM compile into native binaries. That means that every Java app out there, and there are a lot, should be able to run much faster and in native windowing environments within Linux - and that Java code written natively for Linux would also be (somewhat) portable between platforms using VMs.
Aga
Re:Not such big news after all... (Score:2)
These can run most non-Swing applications perfectly. They are distributed By Default in Redhat and Ubuntu. Eclipse runs on them, Tomcat runs on them. Most Java applications run on them. This is old news.
It is not under question how "java works". It's easy. It's well published and well known.
Re:Not such big news after all... (Score:3, Informative)
For the bazillionth time, Javascript is not Java. I can't believe there are people on
Re:All true. (Score:2)
While the following benchmarks are somewhat biased, they fairly reflect the speed of the previous generation of Sun's JVM. The latest one (5.0) improves upon this.
http://kano.net/javabench/ [kano.net]
Java's not the perfect t
Re:Oh, dear lord (Score:2)
Re:Oh, dear lord (Score:2)
Re:Oh, dear lord (Score:2)
Re:Java is written in... (Score:2)
Re:Get your forks ready.... (Score:2)
Re:forks are good (Score:2)
Well guess what, it's 20 years later, and do you know what the biggest complaint and resistance I get when talking to people about Linux? "It's so fragmented and spread out, I don't know what to choose or where to find what I'm looking for."
I love Linux. I like the compatibility and reliablity of Java. But I do think that a fork of Java by another one of the big guys would undermine m
Re:Java and the DISPLAY variable (Score:2)
So... your favourite Java feature is something written in C around 25 years ago?