Java to be Open Sourced in October

thePowerOfGrayskull writes "Sun is now stating that the Hotspot JVM and javac will be open-sourced in October of this year, with the rest to follow by the end of 2007. There is still no word as to which license it will be released under. For those who haven't seen it yet, Sun has previously opened a public developer community site for soliciting feedback and providing updates about the process."

eh?

"Source code for Java already is available and has been for 10 years", said James Gosling. I guess Open Source means they want free developers.

Re:eh?

It's part of the easing of license restrictions that currently make it difficult to incorporate Java in certain types of Free Software project, and that cause hassle for companies like RedHat and Novell/SUSE who sincerely want to distribute Java but more than that want their operating systems to be 100% Free Software.

It's funny. The prime difference between Open Source and Free Software is that OSS is married to a community based development model whereas Free Software is just the basic principle of it being Free. Everyone keeps using "Open Source" here, but Sun has, actually, been following the community based development model part of Open Source for years without making Java Free Software. If it's not Free Software, it's not Open Source, but Java's certainly proven you can have the advantages of Open Source without actually making your software open source.

So why are they doing this? Well, like I said in my first paragraph, the current license and environment is too restrictive for many significant potential adopters. They're finally recognising people want the freedom, not just an open development model.

Re:eh?

In the long run, this will make Java more portable too. It took the FreeBSD Foundation some serious time lobbying before they could distribute Java as a package. Even from ports (source, for the non-BSDies here), Java is a pain on FreeBSD, because the lack of support, crazy patchwork and the need to download everything by hand, whilst signing agreements.

I really hope that we can look forward to a working, recent Java version on FreeBSD without the old bugs and the trouble with OSS-principles in the near future. Kaffe / Classpath just isn't doing the trick. I wonder what this will do to OpenOffice.org.

It all depends on the license. I do hope this will draw some of the fine folks at Kaffe / GNU / Apache who have done a great job by recoding Java to Java itself. But then, if it isn't the GPLv3, RMS will probably keep screaming for a "real free" reversed engineered version of Java.

Well then, off to Flash... Adobe?

October Revolution

Java to be Open Sourced in October

Hey, it's another October Revolutinon [wikipedia.org]!

Long live the programmer-letariat!

"While the Copyright exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no Copyright."

Big deal for OSS

Depending on the license that they choose, OSS purists can now utilize Java in their programs. OpenOffice.org ran into some issues [newsforge.com] when it began using Java to power some of its components. Hopefully the license under which this is released will be acceptable.

Re:Big deal for OSS

Well Joe can release whatever Java interpreter he wants, there's no guarantee that anyone's going to use it. You could have 500 different forks of the Java code (license permitting), but unless they provide some huge advantage and become mainstream (see egcs/gcc, which turned out to be a good thing from what I've heard), the conformant Java interpreters/compilers/runtimes are going to remain the de facto ones to use. And Joe can sit there and run his modified version of the Java platform all he wants, while everyone else happily sticks to the comformant platforms.

Re:Big deal for OSS

Yeah, look what happened to perl and python thanks to their open license. Incompatible bytecode everywhere.

Why is it only Java is so fragile that it can't withstand openness?

Re:Big deal for OSS QWZX

I know, I shouldn't feed a troll....

You are the reason they were reluctant to make it (fully) open source.

You obviously are confident you know more about what makes a good language than the designers of Java do. Have you read even one paper at jcp.org [jcp.org]? Have you looked at the people [jcp.org] who make up the JCP? IBM, Apple, Cisco, Intel, HP, ATI, NVidia, Creative Labs, Google (!), Apache, Apogee, Namco ... you really think you're smarter than their combined intellect and months of discussion? Trust me, you're not.

I'm sure you and a lot of others are already giddy with excitement over the idea of making a "better Java" with const [sun.com] and operator overloading [sun.com].

When you understand the "less is more" [sun.com] principle, you'll begin to understand why all your pet features don't belong in the language.

Re:Big deal for OSS QWZX

Have you looked at the people who make up the JCP? IBM, Apple, Cisco, Intel, HP, ATI, NVidia, Creative Labs, Google (!), Apache, Apogee, Namco ... you really think you're smarter than their combined intellect and months of discussion?

Yeah. The individual usually is smarter than the group.

Re:Big deal for OSS QWZX

you really think you're smarter than their combined intellect and months of discussion? Trust me, you're not.

Unless you're posting that from an AT&T Unix console, you're benefitting from people who had the hubris to think you're wrong.

The road of progress was paved by people who thought the current way of doing things was dumb, and who set out to find a better alternative. This is generally regarded as a good thing (except by people with a vested interest in the old ways).

Let's turn Java into TMMLPTEALPAITAFNFAL!

But Java would be so much better if it was more like $MY_FAVOURITE_LANGUAGE! For example, it's lacking some features found in PHP like being mixable with HTML code and not using namespaces! And it should have the syntactic goodness of both Ruby and Haskell! Speaking of Haskell, why doesn't Java use type inference everywhere? Forcing the user to give a type only makes things complicated. Also, function declarations should not look like String foobar(int blah, int fhqwhgads) - foobar::Integer -> Integer -> String is much better for a completely nonspecific reason that everyone with two brain cells to rub together could see (just as he could see that such declarations should be optional since they could be inferred by the compiler). Also, Java should run on Dotnet and use FLTK as the main GUI toolkit.

And Javadoc should translate all source code comments into Esperanto.

Re:Big deal for OSS

There are already free JVMs [kaffe.org] and free Java compilers [gnu.org]. The problem is the class libraries. Java's standard libraries are huge, and free reimplementations are having a hard time keeping up [classpath.org]. Without the libraries, open source versions of javac and the JVM won't bring us significantly closer to the goal of a completely free Java platform.

Re:Big deal for OSS

You can LOOK at the source all you want, but why don't you make a change, say renaming the util package to utility, post your source code, and send Sun an email with a link to your modified source code. You'll be asked to remove your modified code lickity split. The SCSL is open source but NOT redistributable. So why a less restrictive license? Say I have a KDE based distro, I want to package Java with that distro, but there's a bug in java that breaks the clipboard under KDE but not GTK (this is a real life bug) and Sun refuses to address it because they only support GTK. Under the SCSL, you're toast. Under something less restrictive, you can patch the affected class, and distribute your "fixed" rt.jar.

Okay, but what does "open source" mean?

Is this "open source" as in "open source"?

Is this "open source" as in Apple's "public source" Darwin project, where they're basically going "you can see and compile all the code, but no way are you going to be redistributing this as any kind of commercial project"?

Is this "open source" as in Microsoft's "shared source" projects, where it's totally not open source at all except in a PR sense?

Is this "open source" as in Sun's Solaris "open sourcing", where it's open source in all technical senses, but it's under an unbelievably elaborate license which exists for no reason except to engender GPL incompatibility and keep Linux from benefiting from the source release, which effectively scares everyone away from the project?

Cuz really, unless "Java to be Open Sourced" really means "Java to be Open Sourced", it won't make a difference, acceptance of Java will continue to be held back by the perceived closedness of the Java language and real linux-unfriendliness of the Java runtime, and languages like C#/Mono will continue to make inroads until Apache finishes their Harmony project.

Re:Closed Java is worse then closed C#

C# is just a language. There is a specification for it that has been submitted to ECMA, as there are for lots of the pieces that make up MicroSoft's ".Net" initiative. Not all their ideas are bad ones, and anyone is free to implement standards.

To quote Mono's FAQ [mono-project.com] page:

The Mono Project is an open development initiative sponsored by Novell to develop an open source, UNIX version of the Microsoft .NET development platform. Its objective is to enable UNIX developers to build and deploy cross-platform .NET Applications. The project implements various technologies developed by Microsoft that have now been submitted to the ECMA for standardization.

Personally its a rather nice language.

Oh, as far as:

There are also potential patent issues (I can't believe that there would be _no_ patents that cover C#.)

Unless you know something the rest of us don't, this strikes me more as spreading FUD then anything else.

Re:Okay, but what does "open source" mean?

Some major things in no particular order:

1. Open Source means Open Source. There's a list of approved licenses. Sun are aware of this, they participate in the OSI, they've submitted licenses before for approval. They're not saying "Open Source" when they mean "Shared Source" or anything like that. Who do you think they are, SGI? ;-)

2. Jonathan Schwarz has specifically stated that the GPL is under consideration. (See his blog) It sounds like they're interested in GPL3 but obviously want to see what it has to say first.

3. OpenOffice.org is available under the GPL. Releasing Java with a compatible license would help resolve some of the issues there are in integrating Java code with OOo code, which is a live issue right now.

4. This is a major issue. Right now, the two major enterprise distributions, RedHat, and SUSE, are promoting alternatives to Java, be they attempted workalikes like GCJ or full blown rivals like Mono. Both RedHat and Novell are being clear on this: they don't want Java in its present form because it's not Free Software. Sun has to act. They're saying they're going to act. This is, stategically, one of their most important projects, if not their most important (Solaris wasn't, StarOffice wasn't even close. By comparison, Java is something dear to Sun's heart as the only technology they own that truly does influence the direction the entire computing industry is going in.) So you can't blame them for taking baby steps. But when they say it's going to go open source, I believe them. And when Schwarz talks about the GPL and uses phrases like "Free Software" and "Open Source" with fairly clear deference to their supporter's meanings, it's hard for me to believe they haven't done their homework, that they're not aware of the damage they'll do if they don't follow through, and that they have no intention of following through.

Should we begin `digging graves?'

Should we begin digging Kaffe's and GNU ClassPath's graves? I hope not. By the way, we shuld not be suprised if we hear OSS zealots saying that this action should have come earlier. Some will even say it is too little too late.

Re:Should we begin `digging graves?'

Don't use the "d"-word here. ;)

Good

They better do it fast. Sadly for Java, .NET took almost everything good about Java and fixed lots of its quirks and gotchas. And with Mono, OSS people are giving it a chance too. With dynamic language support being heavily invested in both platforms, having outside contributors is critical.

Now that Java can be redistributed legally (tell that to the slackware guy, he has always included it by default), and will be open sourced soon, it can fight back.

Re:Good

Do you have any data that shows that Mono deployment in the enterprise is increasing, relative to java deployment? Because, in my experience of 8 years of enterprise java, Mono is not making any strides. It's a backwater that a few people are toiling in.

Re:Good

Mmm.. thats my take as well.
My background is 9 years in Finance/IT in various technical (mostly programming / systems engineering) roles in three European countries, working in financial institutions of the size 30K-130K employees.
The only .Net stuff I've seen is on the client side of some internally developed trading systems. The serverside, however, is usually run as J2EE apps running in one of the many servlet/ejb containers you see in the marketplace nowadays... J2EE simply rules the serverside and SWING apps are seen quite frequently. My guess is that banks will be happier extending eclipse when writing their client apps than going the .Net route...
Maybe the .Net route is more popular within other market segments ? Anyone working in another industry care to comment ?

In time for 1.6?

October is the current projected release timeframe for JDK 1.6. I'm pretty sure that's not a co-incidence.

Cheers,
Ian

So all the juicy bits are to be left for later

Sure, HotSpot may be a bit faster than free JVMs, but the free ones do function well enough. Also, free Java compilers are already readily available. For a long time, the main issue has been the maturity of free class libraries (particularly their Swing/AWT implementations), and now Sun says they'll be getting around to releasing that around the end of 2007. Almost smells like timing the release to a date when they think Classpath will have most of it nailed anyway.

And then there's the license bit, but I shan't speculate on that uninformedly.

Better and smaller class libraries

It's definitely the class libraries that make Java "java". The language is straightforward and there are decent JVM workalikes, but developers write their code around the class libraries. The problem I've always found with Java is the bloat of the class libraries, so I'd like to see open source distributions make lean and mean Java variants.

A perfect Java distro would maybe drop all the deprecated methods (will Sun ever do that? Java 1.6 is a good opportunity...) and unbundle some of the least-used stuff like the CORBA and RMI stuff. Heck, even Swing and AWT should be optional packages. Why couldn't Java be structured sort of like a Java Web Start install, pulling in libraries only if needed. Almost everything is connected to the internet these days and good caching of libraries from trusted sources would be a decent way to get full functionality with a smaller initial footprint.

Re:Better and smaller class libraries

Drop RMI? You realize that communication to EJB's is RMI right?

And for the love of gods, why bother trimming the libraries? If you don't use the classes, they don't get loaded into the VM. Everything else is inflating including the OSes and you want to trim the programmers libraries?

The more I look at your post, the more I realize you are straddling two fences. You say drop Swing and AWT implying that you are on the server in which case, your not downloading the JVM & libraries to the client anyway. Then you say Java needs to be like a Java Web Start install, meaning you are on the client side and therefore need the libraries you just said to toss! Oh and btw, Java Web Start is part of the jre download - if you have to download and install something to the client, why not download it all at once? Besides, the libraries *are* broken up - j2se and j2ee, correct?

Re:So all the juicy bits are to be left for later

Exactly. Free Software has plenty of JVMs and compilers. Heck, the Free Software world has too many JVMs and compilers. What's needed are Java compatible class libraries under a license that is both amenable to proprietary and Free Software developers.

At this point Sun is simply trying to draw support away from the various Free Java implementations. Sun knows that if the Free Software implementations ever become popular that its chances of controling Java long term are essentially flushed down the toilet. Sun reacted too late with Solaris, and it is desperate to keep Java from suffering a similar fate. So it is doing everything in its power to keep people away from Free Software Java-alike systems.

If Sun were serious it would A) concentrate on releasing the Java class libraries, and B) it would have given Java developers some guidance on the license that it will be using. Everything else is just fluff.

Does it still matter?

I don't mean this as a troll at all. It's just the main thing that enamored me with Java 8 or 9 years ago was that I found myself getting projects done much faster in Java than in C++. Since then, however, I've found Python, which I'm even more productive in. For big projects, where strongly defined interfaces help control complexity, C# is now an option.

So given that we have Python (for fast code) and C# (for big systems), do people really prefer Java for new projects anymore?

Re:Does it still matter?

Apache seems to be banking pretty hard on it.

What of IBM

And the masses calling for open sourcing IBM's production desktop and embedded VM?

*crickets*

Exactly. This has always been and will always about looting Sun microsystems or [insert OSS bogeyman in possession of valuable technology here].

This is what I don't understand about Sun...

If they had done this right 5 years ago, .NET would have been stillborn and Sun would be the worlds leading application platform vendor. That's a desirable and advantageous position for a hardware vendor to be in. Instead we're 2 months before a release and we still don't have enough details to consider java for future projects. With the benefit of hindsight, the best business decision Sun could have made back in 2001 would have been to relicense the java source code like they were being asked to.

who cares?

Why are people clamoring for open java? As an application developer, I don't use Java, and it has nothing to do with it being open-sourced. It has to do with a bloated framework that I'm not supposed to distribute with my application, an inconsistent UI, and speed issues. If I could compile a native executable that Just Worked(tm) then I would love it.

Java is still only good for simple embedded web applications, or server-side applications. From an application developer's stand point, Java grew out but never grew up. Open sourcing doesn't fix any of this.

Mono is still a better option.

Re:who cares?

What is this "native executable" you speak of? To quote morpheus, "Do you think those are instructions you are running?" Pretty much every so-called native program you run is passed through the ld.so interpreter that relocates the binary and loads shared libraries. Grep the kernel sources for "ld.so".

The only reason you have to ship a JVM with your app is because a) Microsoft intentionally sabotages compatibility (by strong-arming Dell, etc not to ship Java) and b) because Linux distros can't legally ship it because of license restrictions. Java apps work fine on a Mac without shipping their own JVM.

With a JVM installed as a standard system component you run your Java programs just like any other program. You just double-click or ./ it.

Mono has convenient language syntax with C#, but that's it. The CLR bytecode cannot be interpreted well, so hotspot like optimizations are far harder to do. It's a VM trying to be everything to everybody, so it's not really great at anything. It's startup time is far slower than a gcj'd Java program and it's throughput is much less than a hotspot'd one. The only real benefit is that it is oss.

We're going to do it.. NEXT YEAR!

Sweet! Next year! Damn.. that's close.

Alpha Port?

Maybe now someone will be able to do a full fledged port to Alpha. I've used Alpha (Linux mostly) systems for many years and I'm never going to give them up until I can't make them run anymore. Yes, I know there are other 64 bit options these days, but I just like Alpha.

The only thing I've really found that is lacking on the Alpha is Java support. There are a few little projects out there which offer limited support, but not since compaq stopped its implementation at JRE 1.3 has there been a real Java environment for Alpha.

Since Java is one of my all time favorite languages to work with, I really hope this could lead to a complete, up to date, stable JRE for Alpha/Linux.

Open source changes...

How long until some enterprising hacker adds all the features to Java that people miss, such as operator overloading? I personally would use Java far more if I could avoid code such as this:

result = x.add(y.multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(7))).pow(3).ab s().setBit(27);

(Example stolen frome Jamie Zawinski's "Java Sucks" rant.)
Add operator overloading (and I mean PROPER operator overloading, not some find-and-replace garbage) to the JDK v6, and you've got a language that (despite being slower than C++ in some cases) towers over C++ in so many ways - garbage collection, easy exception handling, a huge standard library...

Applying open-sourcing to the real world

If Colonel Sanders would open-source those eleven herbs and spices, we could finally know with certainty how many of them are salt.

But Sire, the train has left the station

I doubt if this will change anything:

1. In the application space, there are much more productive languages and tools. Think Ruby, Python. And extreme performance has never been a Java forte either.

2. Core language capabilities are obsolete now. Bruce Eckel's famous piece The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts [artima.com] captures this nicely. And looking at the C# 3.0 spec, with lambdas, automatic type inference, monadic comprehensions and lots of functional programming goodness, Java is left way behind. MS is also way ahead in adding dynamic languages support to the platform (Microsoft supported IronPython v1 for .Net Fx due out this month.)

3. I think Gosling needs to move on. After he said Ruby/PHP are just scripting languages, and they just generate web pages, and lack the "power" of Java. [Which "power"?]

4. With Vista MS would have finally killed Java's Run Anywhere promise. It will still run, but it will look totally out of place. The new eye candy, and the good communication foundation (WCF) is better and easier accessed through .Net.

The only reason to have Java is for compatibility in a "Legacy" Java environment. Kind of the same reason why we still have mainframes. These days I cannot think of a single reason why someone would go with Java, other than interop.

Java vs. Mono now

This makes things more complicated for me.

I'm a C++ Windows developer and I'm interested in starting to do some C# or Java. It is my belief that both are quite good and both can run on Windows and Linux (this is a requirement) so it doesn't matter which I choose technically. I feel equal hostility to MS and Sun so that doesn't matter. If the open source community decides on one or the other as being more 'free' and really gets behind it then I'll probably go with that.

With Sun still playing games on opening Java, to the point where the JVM couldn't be bundled, and with the Mono project sounding pretty good (so long as I stick to the right API's) I was definately leaning towards Mono. But if Sun really does open Java then that will probably sway me the other way. Of course, I won't base my decision on the info we have today - I'll wait and see if they really do it.

Does it matter?

I'm still not installing JRE to slow down my computer. It can be as open source as it wants. Why do people still bother with java? It's a poorly designed, poorly implemented language. I'm not going to bog down my machines with any program that slows it down un-necessarily, which means: I'm not using anything written in java. Now if it being open sourced means that I can get applications written in java as precompiled binaries not needing JRE, well, then maybe.

rhY

drop dead, Sun

10 years ago, Sun promised ANSI and ISO standards for Java plus open source implementations. What did we get? No standards, a lot of FUD (yes, FUD from Sun) about how they can't because of MSFT, proprietary and closed implementations, costly compatibility tests, bloated APIs and implementations, and threats of lawsuits.

Now that FOSS implementations are mature and nearly complete, Sun is trying to undermine them by finally open sourcing Java (at least in name--in practice, the license will probably be a sham).

The sooner Sun goes out of business, the better for everybody. Microsoft at least makes no secret about where they stand on FOSS, but Sun pretends to be a friend to FOSS but keeps spreading FUD about FOSS and keeps stabbing FOSS efforts in the back.

TCK and calling it "Java"

To me the real question is "When will Sun be releasing the various TCKs?" The conformance suites are what is needed to validate any of the java implementations and call them "Java" in the eyes of Sun (and their lawyers).

As James Gosling has said -- the source to the JVMs and libraries has been available for 10 years. But the TCKs aren't available in source or binary form.

Open sourced

It's interesting to note that "open source" is now a verb. And we can be sure of that because the poster has inflected it for tense.

The part of the compound that seems most verbal to me is "open" -- yet they don't refer to it as "opened source" -- which ostensibly refers to source (code) which has undergone an event of opening. Instead, the whole kit and kaboodle has been verbalized. Or, alternatively, "source" is being inflected as a verb on its own, becoming past tense "sourced", leaving "open" as ... ? An adverbial? Must be, because the opposite of "open sourced" would be "closed sourced", right? So the preceding modifier controls the manner of sourcing, either in the opening or closing direction. Hm. What a conundrum :)

And the implication for phones?

This is way cool, and coming right on the heels of the open linux phone
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/0 8/15/141244 [slashdot.org]

Dare we hope for a perfect marriage?

Community Summary

Let me be the one to show a summary of Java coders in the community. WOOOHOO finally! I can only see this as a good thing in general. We can only hope that it will grow in popularity now.