Red Hat Plans Open Source Java

sthiyaga writes "According to a ComputerWire article, Red Hat is in discussions with Sun about launching an open source version of the Java platform. 'There's always been an interest in an open source implementation of Java developed in a clean room that adheres to the Java standards,' Szulik told ComputerWire. 'We're in discussions with Sun. We'd like to do this with their support.'"

Gosling favors Open-Source Java

[Domino]

James Gosling, the creator of Java, recently mentioned that he favors an Open-Source Java. (See Infowork article [infoworld.com]).

Some people withing Sun seem to be scared though that an Open-Source Java standard could be "polluted" by Microsoft.

There

[Ann Coulter]

is already some source code [sun.com] available. :)

What was Blackdown?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't it originally a clean-room open source JDK for Linux that Sun adopted?

Re:Much needed

[Dave2 Wickham]

I'm probably talking complete and utter balls...but...

This reference of .NET refers to the ".NET bytecode" or whatever it's called, which .NET programmes are compiled into, which allows easy compatibility between different .NET languages and platforms.

Again, I'm probably talking out of my arse, though...

Sun's Jonathan Schwartz Opposes Open Source Java

[tomkerigan]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president of software at Sun Microsystems Inc., spoke with Computerworld during the recent JavaOne conference here about the possibility of Java becoming open-source, the potential market for Java in mobile devices and Java's relationship with IBM. Excerpts from that interview follow.

Should Java be made fully open-source? The problem with open-source is that [victory] goes to volume, and that's evident in the Linux community today where ISVs [independent software vendors] are qualifying to Red Hat and abandoning everyone else. Why? Because Red Hat has volume. If Java were open-source, Microsoft could take it, deliver it as they saw fit and drive a definition of Java that was divergent from the one that the community wanted to be compatible. And to the victor would go the spoils of that nefarious action. To the extraordinary credit of the Java Community Process [JCP], we have a uniform compatible standard that now spans hundreds of millions of devices, hundreds of millions of smart cards, hundreds of millions of desktops and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of servers. So you have to really be careful in understanding the distinction between open-source and open standards.

More at http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/dev elopment/story/0,10801,82286,00.html [computerworld.com]

Re:What was Blackdown?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Blackdown was not a clean-room implementation, and was based in part on Sun's Java. Especially in the class libraries area.

Re:Native Java

[Dingleberry]

Java not being open source isn't "holding" this back. Look at the GCJ web site FAQ. They are currently writing peers in GTK and XLIB for AWT. Once that's finished Swing will follow.

Re:There

[Monkey-Man2000]

It sounds like they're interested in doing a clean-room implementation that isn't tied down by proprietary licenses like the one Sun provides (and the link you gave). This is a _good_ thing.

Re:Blackdown?

[triskaidekaphile]

A bridge between the open source community and the commercial software development world... [blackdown.org]

So apparently not Open Source.

Re:What was Blackdown?

[Anonymous Coward]

No - Blackdown was simply a port of the Sun JDK to Linux. Same source base.

Re:Much needed

[spacecowboy420]

.NET is Microsoft's newest programming language offerings. Basically the purpose is to integrate the web into windows applications. There is VB .NET, ASP .NET, C#, etc... The languages are actually pretty usable in a windows enviroment, and are OO. This makes them a little more powerful. I use Java, but its nice to bust out a VB .Net proprietary app that runs cleaner/ faster on a windows system. The down side is similiar to Java though, in order to run Java apps, you need the JRE, with .NET stuff, you need the HUGE ass .NET framework installed.

Re:Much needed

[ikkonoishi]

.NET is MS's latest development platform.

At it's heart it is meant to be a way for various programming languages and protocols to communicate with each other and work together.

The main problem is (of course) that to truly become platform independant MS would have to release a large amount of the code that runs it.

Microsft's .NET Site [microsoft.com]

A reason to enlist Sun's Cooperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people have asked why RedHat needs to enlist Sun's cooperation in order to implement a clean room Java. One important reason, is to gain access to the JCK (Java Compatibility Kit), that contains approximately 20,000 test cases that you need to pass in order to be certified as Java Compliant.

oh boy, here we go...

[Kunta Kinte]

Newsflash: Microsoft has gone and made a better Java -- C#, and funnily enough they not only standardized it with recognized standards bodies (which Sun has never done with Java), they've also released their own shared source version and have not at all stood in the way of third parties making their own implementations (dotGNU, Mono, etc).

• Microsoft still have options to deter the development of an open-source .NET implementation if they want to. They have the patents.>
• EMCA standards do not garantee much. EMCAScript anyone? We're still coding for JScript, and Javascript, even if EMCA "standardized" the language.
  
• Sun has the JCP @ JCP [jcp.org]. Most Java standards development has been done through the JCP for years now. Sun recently had 4 of they JSRs turned down! They won't happy, but had to accept that the specifications won't be accepted as they are. I believe the specific standard increased the minimum requirements for Mobile Java. The process is open and does work.
• Oracle, IBM, and some of the largest software development companies in the world have billions riding on Java. These companies have always had and continue to have a say in how Java is done. I'd trust that situation over a bought specification to a patent-protected technology owned by a monopolist anyday.

I suspect Microsoft will tolerate dotGNU, Mono, as long as they see it beneficial to do so. Also, the language and runtime is not much. The true power of .NET and Java is in the wide amount of libraries available to these languages. I really wish the Mono team good like to replicating that in a source compatible manner. It would be no small feat.

Re:Gosling favors Open-Source Java

[iabervon]

We're talking about a platform implementation, not the standard. The standard will surely remain Sun's property. The "Java" trademark will also remain Sun's, and Sun will retain the right to dictate how it is used.

The Sun v. MicroSoft case was based on MS shipping a "Java" environment which did not follow the standard to Sun's satisfaction. The copyright on the environment was never in question: it belonged to MicroSoft.

If there's a GPL Java environment, you can only call it "Java(tm)" if it has not been changed such that it fails to follow the standard. This would most likely mean that extensions remain internal to a given project, or are reference implementations or research for proposed modifications to the standard, etc.; on the other hand, you're perfectly free to port it to a different platform, change implementation details, add your new optimization, and so forth. You could also change things that the standard leaves to the implementation to decide (like command-line options to the tools).

Re: Much needed

[Deusy]

it only makes sense to create an open source version of the core platform.

I thought there were already open source java's out there...

I guess Blackdown [blackdown.org] and Kaffe [kaffe.org] are mirages.

Re:Gosling favors Open-Source Java

[73939133]

Newsflash: Microsoft has not yet patented .NET, they have merely applied for a patent. Even if they get the patent, it will apparently be a patent on the totality of .NET, not every piece of it. In particular, something like Mono seems perfectly safe: it implements ECMA C# and a lot of non-.NET libraries.

Newsflash: Sun has plenty of patents on key aspects of Java APIs and the JVM (check the uspto site).

No, it's more likely GCJ

[Per Bothner]

Remember that GCJ was developed at Cygnus (starting in 1996), and that Red Hat bought Cygnus. While Red Hat has not put a lot of resources in GCJ, they still employ some of the early GCJ engineers, who are still active in GCJ in at least on a part-time volunteer basis. In Red Hat 8.0, what you get when you run "java" is the interpreter component of GCJ. And it looks like they are getting serious about Java, and GCJ.

My guess (as original "inventor" of GCJ, but no longer associated with Red Hat except as share holder): To the extent that Sun is willing to open-source parts of JDK, they'll use that; if Sun is unwilling, they will use GCJ.

If you don't like swing...

[Dalcius]

You might consider SWT. It's an open source Java widget toolkit (GUI API) that sits on top of native system widgets. I just started developing with it, so I can't speak for much, but it seems to be quite fast and is pretty easy to implement.

Some info:
The Eclipse project [eclipse.org] (of which SWT is a part of)
SWT Guide (good intro to SWT) [eclipse.org]
SWT API Specification [eclipse.org]
SWT Articles (many regarding topics internal to the API) [eclipse.org] -- scroll down to SWT

Re:No, it's more likely GCJ

[Per Bothner]

gcj only makes native binarys from java source, INFO or byte compiled java code to run on a virtual machine. it is NOT a virtual machine.

Wrong. The program gcj is a compiler, like javac, but the GCJ project and run-time includes a virtual machine. The command gij is a plug-in replacement for the java command (except for unimplemented features and bugs, of course).

Re:Hey troll/Tool Of The Man (tm)

[jpmorgan]

Ever hear of the JCP? That's the Java standards body.

And, it's not a puppet body like some other bodies you might be able to think of.

Dude, pass me that crack. ECMA [ecma-international.org] and ISO [iso.org] have way more credibility than JCP. ISO is the standards organization.

However...

[SuperKendall]

When a standard is submitted through the JCP (Java Community Process) a condition of including that IP in the standard is that you allow others to use any IP embedded in the standard for free, in perpetuity. So whatever patents Sun has around Java can be used by others in the Java world.

There are already real, working Java implementations from third parties like GCJ and IBM's VM, which have been around for a while... Mono has not really been around long enough to see if they have really escaped a patent trap.

Re:Much needed

[sbrown123]

The .Net framework is ~22 megs. That's not that big, really. I know the JDK is almost 100 megs, and that's only a 5 min download.


The .NET framework does not include the compiler and associated development pieces that come with the JDK. A better comparison is the .NET framework vs. Java JRE (Java Runtime Environment). And I have absolutely no idea where you found a JDK at 100M in size! The latest is less than 30M.

Re:Native Java

[Glock27]

No, I think what's holding back Swing support for GCJ is the fact that you actually have to IMPLEMENT all those AWT classes (Swing is built on top) using native GUI libraries.

The whole point of Swing was to eliminate native peers - all Swing needs is a 2D frame buffer. In theory, you could have a very broken AWT native peer implementation and Swing would be just fine.

Personally, I think SWT is a good alternative - and it already works with gcj.

The rest of your post is basically a non-sequitor.

Re:Gosling favors Open-Source Java

[jone]

This isn't really an issue with the JDK. The source is available, and in fact, some distributions (gentoo) actually do allow you install the JDK from source.

Admittedly, it not released under an approved open source license, but it is not correct to say that you are unable to examine the source.

Re:Hey troll/Tool Of The Man (tm)

[Mindbridge]

Dude, pass me that crack. ECMA and ISO have way more credibility than JCP. ISO is the standards organization

... and they have standardised less than 10% of the .NET APIs (just the CLR and C#). Compare this with what the JCP has standardized (hint: pretty much everything and beyond)

What's the use of the ECMA standard, really? Perhaps the fact that Mono has to use Wine is not a good enough reality check for you?

Re:Much needed

[sbrown123]

vs 47.3 on my workstation). And it does more stuff -- a lot of the add-on packages for Java, including all of their J2EE crap, parellels


I am guessing you are stating that Java has more stuff since .NET does not have J2EE anything. Microsoft cannot have anything past the 1.1 J2SE framework due to license conflicts with Sun. Also, the J2EE framework is a seperate package from the standard java runtime (J2SE).


CD is trivial, and most Windows Update and XP users have it already.


I have XP and had to download the .NET framework from Windows Update to get it.


What's cool about .NET is that the IDE supports all sorts of really useful data transformation and reporting mechanisms using SQL/XML/etc built right in...no rolling your own data access methods (though I end up doing it anyway).


This is covered by JDO in Java. Theres also a really nice opensource reporting library call JasperReports. Along with that theres iReports which is an opensource IDE for creating JasperReports.


3) .NET is better than Java for apps that will always be used on a Windows PC, because:
- It has a much faster graphics interface, while maintaining a robust graphics toolkit.


See the SWT project. It uses native graphics rendering and widgets in Java.


- It interoperates quickly and pretty thoroughly with current COM APIs, and wraps up nicely for use in non-.NET apps


SWT has OLE/ActiveX support.


- The Studio environment is faster to work with and has a more mature debugger than any Java IDE I've seen, including Netbeans


Eclipse project works real well. Its very fast (again, uses SWT to render widgets) and has a very mature debugger.


- ADO.NET is pretty nicely done, and things like DataAdapters parellel structures I always end up writing in Java anyway.


Its JDO in Java world.


Anyway, the runtime filesize argument is just crap. The java guys need to get that GUI speed up to par or .NET's going to roll right over them.


Yes, check out Eclipse (www.eclipse.org). I have been using SWT in combination with GCJ to create native windows applications that dust anything created in VB (though C/C++ apps are a couple milliseconds quicker).


Eight months ago I'd have never said this, but Java isn't my favorite language anymore. C# is.


I liked .NET. It has some interesting concepts that will spur Sun to improve Java. I think SharpDevelop is a nice IDE worth checking out for anyone wanting to get into .NET without buying Visual Studio. Also of interest is the Mono project (www.go-mono.org) which is a open source implementation of .NET framework.


And even association with the vile and repugnant Microsoft isn't enough to sour it.


I think both Microsoft and Sun suck at being at the helm of both languages. Borland does a better job with C/C++ over Microsoft and IBM does better work with Java compared to Sun.

Re:RedHat should make better use of their time

[MarkSwanson]

A couple of quick points:

1. FUTEX - a fast user-mode mutex. In the likely (hopefully) usual case no context switch happens when you get a futex. This can be a big win under certain synchronization loads. Imagine grabbing a futex in 15 clks vs 1,500 - 6,000 clks (these numbers may be slightly off and will vary quite a bit between machines, glibc and linux kernel versions)

2. NPTL - the New Posix Threading Library - a great improvement in both Posix compliance, performance, latency, and in the maximum number of usable threads. Ingo (one of the authors) announced the creation and destruction of 100,000 threads in one second. This is available in RedHat 9. (I don't know if futexes are available in the RedHat 9 kernel yet).

3. Graphics - Hey, I'm a Linux/Java fan and I'd like to be able to agree with you here but no. Doing a search in Sun's Java bug list will show up a lot of bugs in Linux graphics performance. In fact, check out http://www.javagaming.org/ and browse some of the posts there about it. There are tons of benchmarks of actual games that get 1/10 of the video throughput under Linux vs Win32. Sorry. (BTW, it seems the Blackdown folks are claiming an 80% 2D speedup in their latest port. I haven't tried it yet but it may help).

4. About ALSA - it rocks! What I meant to say was that perhaps RedHat could help the ALSA project support more cards and remove the completely stunned ARTS/ESD/etc... hacks and replace them with the proper ALSA DMIX plugin. This would allow multiple /dev/dsp open()s to work on cards that don't provide hardware mixing. This means you can play Java sounds and run KDE/Gnome sounds at the same time.
(JDK 1.4.2-beta already has ALSA and DMIX support BTW - comments welcome on how well it works).

Re:Native Java

[toriver]

The whole point of Swing was to eliminate native peers - all Swing needs is a 2D frame buffer.

Most of Swing, yes. The exceptions are the top-level containers (JFrame, JDialog, JWindow and JApplet) which extend the AWT components.

Re:Much needed

[TummyX]

So with delegates they are bad because a programmer could write unclear code by putting the delegated function definition well away from where the delegate is initalised? This is as compared to the horrible unreadable code you'll find if you put "anonymous inner class java" into google. If you had to create 10 such inner classes would you advocate putting this code all in one initialisation function (such that it is very big), or would you create 10 seperate initialiser functions that the first calls (such that the code that calls the initialisers is possible pages away from the actual code of the initialiser)?


You'd write ten inner classes if you must.


And anonymous inner classes prevent this how? Oh. They dont.


They prevent it because the handling code is in a seperate distinct module (a class).


Give it up mate. Java is an old, hacked, bungled, proprietary language from a monopolistic company. If there's going to be an open source language, get behind Mono, and make open source .NET.


I'm working on both mono and pnet.