Sun Open Sources Java Under GPL

prostoalex writes "The embargo is off, and Associated Press is reporting on Sun releasing Java under GPL. Sun is hoping that this step will attract more developers, as well as extend the lifespan of Java. The article notes that this is 'one of the largest additions of computer code to the open-source community', and that Java is currently being run on something like 3.8 Billion devices worldwide." From the article: "Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software, said the company hopes to turn more developers into Java programmers, who may then create additional software to support Sun products. 'The open-sourcing of this really means more — more richness of offerings, more capability, more applications that consumers will get to use,' Green said. 'The platform itself will become a place for innovation.' All the Java source code is expected to be released by March 2007, Green said. The move covers all Java technology, which includes software that runs on handheld devices, personal computers and servers."

Holy Shit!

Well, on a more practical note, this means that within a few months, I should be seeing a real, complete, working JRE sitting in the main repositories for Debian and Ubuntu. Sweet. We no longer have to go and fetch it ourselves or experiment with incomplete toolkits.

For the ideologues, knowing that there's one less piece of non-free software on your system is a real comfort. For me, personally, all that apparently remains are ATI drivers and Flash Player.

Yay!

Re:Holy Shit!

Why the heck didn't Sun do this 10 years ago? It would have save the world a LOT of grief.

Because 10 years ago, before Java had built up the momentum it has today, a certain company deliberately embraced, extended and corrupted the core libraries with their own OS specific extensions, and shipped this version with their operating system until they were forced by court to stop. Had they succeeded Sun would have lost control of the language to the other company, or it would have been forked to irrelevance. This understandably made Sun a bit paranoid about having total control over Java for quite a while.

Re:Holy Shit!

Yes, there's actually an interview [sun.com] with James Gosling that mentions the issue with Microsoft. Refer to Q&A pairs #2 and #3.

Re:Debian vs. Mozilla

You've got it wrong. The "shoddy debian patches" were just an excuse mentioned by the Mozilla Corporation, but they weren't the dealbreaker - they could have been negotiated. The dealbreaker were the images (their license is not free), because either debian includes them and then it violates its own standards (DFSG), or doesn't include them and then violates Mozilla's trademark conditions they set forward or they change the name of the package. They went for the latter and I'm 100% supportive of that decision.

I got to the point that if I could, I would use something else than Firefox. Only that I need a few extensions + the resize image capability. I don't like the recent direction Firefox is heading.

My own symphathy goes unreservedly to Debian, as a software developer I know what a total pain stupid corporate policies are to deal with.

bravo

I don't think the Mono folks are rejoicing ;) With this step, SUN has became the largest commercial contributor to the free and open source software pool. OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, now JAVA - well, kudos!

Re:bravo

With this step, SUN has became the largest commercial contributor to the free and open source software pool. OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, now JAVA - well, kudos!

NFS... Netbeans... JXTA...

Sun has been the biggest commercial contributor to Open Source for some time now... this just makes it even more so.

GPL/Open Source benefits Too!

I work for a LARGE government contractor and have had a hard time getting management to realize Open Source in general and the GPL in particular aren't bad for business. Open source here has the same connotation as red communism. Can't get many of them to stop calling it freeware. With Sun making Java GPL they won't have the choice of sticking with that attitude anymore. Many of our existing projects use Java already!

More articles

Some more articles I have found, with some substance to them:
InfoQ [infoq.com], also mentions Glassfish.
eWeek [eweek.com].

There is also going to be a official webcast [sun.com] about this by Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green 9.30 a.m. PT.

In related news, apparently Project Looking Glass [sun.com], the 3d desktop, is likely to be included in the Ubuntu Feisty [java.net] release.

finally

Now Stallman can drink coffee again

I, for one...

... welcome our new Duke overlord.

And its still a PIG!

Anytime I startup a Java program I want to run and hide due to fear that the pages being swapped out to make room for it will crush me where I stand.

Maybe as open source software people will be able to look at it and ask *why* does it have to take up so much memory to do such simple jobs? Compare for example Azureus (in Java) to bittorrent (in Python).

Re:And its still a PIG!

Anytime I startup a Java program I want to run and hide due to fear that the pages being swapped out to make room for it will crush me where I stand. Maybe as open source software people will be able to look at it and ask *why* does it have to take up so much memory to do such simple jobs? Compare for example Azureus (in Java) to bittorrent (in Python).

You have to remember that you are starting up a full virtual machine environment. That is going to have lots of overhead, especially at initialization. Anyone who expects to run "Hello, World" programs efficiently is a fool.

Java really does well with big server apps, where the cost of initialization can be amortized over a long period of time. Additionally, JIT compilation and live profiling really work well here.

Server apps really do well with Java. There are fewer opportunities to create difficult to track bugs, memory management handles the fragmentation issues, etc. The performance delta between a C++ and a Java server app is often fairly negligible* while the development time is often substantially faster and it is easy to move to other platforms.

* - A well written C++ app built for a generic processor architecture and a long running Java server app will frequently run about the same. The C++ app is stuck with the tuning choices made at compile time, while JIT and profiling available in Java will tune the Java app at run time, making up for the overhead of the virtual machine. If the "Gentoo" model is followed - the compiler is carefully set to provide maximum performance for a given machine - the C++ app can run substantially faster. However, the cost is that the binary can no longer be moved to a similar but not identical machine without rebuilding. This tuning activity typically requires lots of time and expertise, and generally makes environmental management efforts prohibitively complex. These solutions don't make their way into most real world environments.

A Great Disturbance

I felt a great disturbance in the slashdot, as if millions of "sun is the next redmond" trolls cried out in terror, and then vanished.

Re:GPL for all?

Then it will still be easier licensewise to use mono.

And patent-wise? [slashdot.org] I mean for non-Novell customers, obviously.

Re:FUD

And I'm sorry to say this but Star Wars isn't real.

That's what the Empire wants you to think!

Re:GPL for all?

I think you misunderstood what I wrote. There are no patent problems with java, simply because SUN chose to license it under the GPL. Java is copyrighted by SUN, and it has a large IP portfolio over java technologies (lots of patents). As soon as they switched over to GPL, they immediately granted free use of these patents to every programmer who builds on java and distributes his code under the GPL. With SUN's choice, there are no longer any patent issues with java. Now contrast this with the deal Novell stuck with Microsoft, that guarantees a 5 year revocable (!) protective covenant for novell customers (and novell customers alone, according to SteveB himself) alone. The difference is HUGE! Of course, the details of the deal are not known - there may or may not be MS IP in Mono. Saying that there are is simply FUD, but than, Microsoft and Novell agreed not to sue each other's customers for patent infringement... which reinforces the perception that there might be patents. And which is the most likely candidate from the software stack distributed by Novell? The Linux kernel? KDE? Apart from perhaps Samba, Mono is the most likely candidate for patent infringement ... I think that is why Perens warns against it. But still, I must emphasize, that this is just my speculation. Don't take it too seriously (my original post was sarcastic, but ./ removed the evil-comment tags). One thing is certain: since SUN decided to distribute java under the GPL, as far as patents goes, it become safe. This cannot be said of Mono, even though you cannot claim the opposite either with absolute certainty... You see what meant now?

Re:GPL for all?

I just found this comment [slashdot.org] pointing to this blog [sun.com] that explains the situation much better. Qute:

Enter Sun's open source Java decision. Novell's Mono project -- essentially a Linux-based clone of Microsoft's .Net -- was apparently a major focus of the deal. For several years now, dating back to the days before Ximian was under Novell's wing, the open source sector has been wondering if Microsoft was going to drop a shoe on Ximian-founder Miguel de Icaza's brainchild (Mono). .Net has always been a bet-the-company gamble for Microsoft. Today, the company is taking heat on every single front and it can't afford a complete cave-in on one of its most important properties. There's no way it could let a .Net clone get away with murder. Sooner or later, this was going to come to a head. Well, now it has.

But the game is not over yet. That's because Microsoft may not be holding the cards that some think it's holding. At least not all of them. One need only look back at Sun's 2004 stand-still agreement with Microsoft to realize that when it comes to .Net-like virtual machine environements, the real IP holder is probably Sun. I'm not a lawyer. But I'm willing to be that there's hardly anything - probably nothing - in .Net for which prior art doesn't exist in Sun's Java or something that came before it. In fact, looking across Sun's entire portfolio of IP as well as the larger world of older intellectual property, it's quite possible that some of the other software that's often packaged with Linux that could potentially be infringing on Microsoft's IP (i.e. OpenOffice, SAMBA, and Evolution) is actually doing nothing of the sort.

That answers your questions better than I could - but I recommend reading the entire blog post, it is rather interesting.

Re:This is good, but...

I love how easily you just shrug off that number.

Java is an embeddable language at the hardware level. So-called "Java chips" provide a very real platform for deployment on handheld devices. It's easier to develop applets in Java than in, say, C, since Java is higher-level. The fact that there is low-level support for such a high-level language makes it popular with cell phone developers.

Your point of Python is a good one. After all, Python is high-level, intelligent, and permits object-oriented development. It's my favorite, and I'm writing a few programs in it right now. However, Java still has a few advantages. First, it's ported more places, the most obvious off the top of my head being that Java's Mac OS X GUIs are far more robust and less buggy than Python's. Second, it's compiled and then byte-interpreted, giving it a fairly good speed compared to Python's interpretation. Python also has structures that, while easier to read, definitely don't execute as fast. (I do concede, however, that Java is no speed demon.)

Also, Java is embeddable as a web applet. Only a few other languages can do that. You can't exactly drag'n'drop a Python application into a web browser, hook it up to a frame, and project it to the world.

Of course, since this is Slashdot, I'll finish up with a low-blow bit of rhetoric. If Python is superior to Java, then why is the leading Bittorrent client, Azureus, written in Java if the original Bittorrent client was written in Python?

Re:This is good, but...

Java is NOT strictly interpreted language. HotSpot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotSpot) mechanism dynamically compiles bytecode into machine code.

In theory, Python has Psyco that can do JIT-compiling, but in practice dynamic nature of Python prevents most of optimizations.

Re:Shouldn't it have been LGPL?

From what I have read, it seems that Java will be dual-licenced, so anyone that do not feel good about GPL can use commercial licence. It seems like a win-win situation to me...

Re:Shouldn't it have been LGPL?

Java will have the same the same exception to GPL [gnu.org] for its classlib as GNU Classpath [classpath.org], so the GPL will not have any effect on code running in the JVM. (It has even fewer restrictions than the LGPL that forces derived works to allow reverse engineering)

Re:What do you mean, "suitable for Linux"?

that Java on Debian will be as easy as "apt-get install java"

Close... More like: "apt-get install java java-doc java-common java-dev java-examples java-gnome libjava libjava-doc libjava-dev" :-)

Re:RMS

I have quoted two soundbites on my blog [sun.com] from videos that will be shown at the announcement tomorrow (the quotes are from the information that was (I believe) given to the press.

"I think Sun has well, with this contribution have contributed more than any other company to the free software community in the form of software. It shows leadership. It's an example I hope others will follow." RMS

"Sun's policy of GPLing java which we are celebrating now is an extraordinary achievement in returning programming technology to that state of freely available knowledge that people can share and improve together. It's a crucial step in the process of turning the technology today into knowledge that people can use freely to make the technology of tomorrow." Eben Moglin

I've seen the video shorts (well some of them) that will be shown at the announcement. I think some folks will be surprised. RMS also makes reference to the java trap.

Tp.

Re:Make?

So am I going to be able to get the sources from somewhere and build Java from scratch?

How is this going to work?

You've been able to do that for years - just not under an Open Source licence. Sun have provided the entire JDK source (including the VM code) under their own Sun Community Source Licence (see http://www.sun.com/software/communitysource/j2se/j ava2/download.xml [sun.com] for the current 1.5 code). There are various restrictions imposed by the SCSL which prevent free redistribution of changes unless you comply with certain conditions, and thus it's not considered to be an OSS licence.

You need a bunch of binaries to get it bootstrapped (i.e. it requires Java to build Java) but the result is entirely compiled from the source you can get from the above site. ;)

GPLing it is a change of licence terms, not a change in the actual availability of the source.

Re:But its 10 years late!

> Just think if Sun had done this in the 90s. There would never have been a GTK/Qt appliactions split because all software would have been written in Java.

Oh thank God they didn't open source it in the 90's!