Sun Agrees to Talk to IBM over Open Sourcing Java 451
comforteagle writes "Sun has agreed to meet with IBM to further discuss the issue of open sourcing Java with them. 'Sun is closely evaluating the effectiveness of the process.' Could Sun be coming around to actually doing this?"
Not very important for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Um. An? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait... an .. implementation?
Rick Ross, president of Javalobby Inc., of Cary, N.C., an association of Java developers with more than 100,000 members, said, "On the surface, Rod's reply indicates a clear willingness on IBM's behalf to invest in an independent, open-source Java implementation that would benefit everyone"
What? Two Javas? This sounds weird. Obviously an open source implementation will grow and respond to demand rapidly and outpace something proprietary, yet it sounds like there will still be a proprietary version. Can anyone shed light on this? I'm confused.
I think it only makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not surprised at all. Quite pleased, actually.
Microsoft's Stand? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just wondering (Score:5, Interesting)
If done right... (Score:5, Interesting)
But, it could work...
Re:Not very important for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Once chosen, I like how strict the OOP was, and the tools that are available.
This could be very good indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Um. An? (Score:3, Interesting)
I cant see clearly at all that an open-source java would necessarily outpace a proprietary version, why do you assume that that would be the case? I'm confused.
Mad Hatter (Score:5, Interesting)
Could this venture open up doors for Mad Hatter to become a part of IBM's fleet of products? Any thoughts?
Re:Um. An? (Score:5, Interesting)
This, aside from Sun withering away, is what I see, too. Or possibly worse, a fork. Anything added to the OSS that finds its way into Suns would likely fall under the GPL, how's Sun feel about that? Clearly Sun and IBM have some things to sort out.
Crossing my fingers! (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article - "Sun officials planned to meet with IBM as early as Thursday to discuss the merits of whether the company should work with IBM on an independent project to create an open-source implementation of Java."
Well...perhaps they've seen the benefit of the OpenOffice project.
Re:Not very important for me (Score:2, Interesting)
NOT free enough (Score:5, Interesting)
apt-get install j2sdk-1.4.2
Now it is not. Of course having source available and having the right to mofify and distribute your own version (f.e. optimized for athlon or modified to conform to debian-standards) of java would be a HUGE bonus, but it is not THAT necessary.
--Coder
Re:Just wondering (Score:5, Interesting)
It's being done quite successfully with MySQL, so Sun would be remiss if they didn't at least explore their options. IBM has proven that they will support open source (as it furthers their ends as well), and doing this for Java would help with their server offerings as well.
Really, I can't see how everyone won't win.
Quite important for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Many people believe RMS is too hardcore about sticking to his guns on this issue, but I do believe he has a good point. Many programs are "free" for temporary use, and Java is one of them. Other examples of superficially free software are Windows Media Player and Adobe Acrobat, for which there are no guarantees of future freedom. These programs, like Java, introduce standards and structure that other people build on. If the freedom of these platforms was to be compromised, many poeple could stand to lose a great deal of work. The only way to guarantee the possibility of future support is to open source it.
Re:Not very important for me (Score:5, Interesting)
"We're not suggesting Sun open source its directory software or proprietary stuff. Java is already in the JCP [Java Community Process]. It is already a community process that many people have contributed to. It's a mistake to look at it as though Sun is the sole author, and this is not any of their proprietary products."
Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)
<offtopic>
Does anyone know if there are implementations of NeWS available as open source now? Has anyone working on one of the "X Is Icky - I have a Better Way" window systems looked at NeWS for a model? Enquiring minds (however enfeebled) want to know.
</offtopic>
Probably too little, too late (Score:3, Interesting)
What IBM should do is offer Microsoft the ability to integrate any of IBM's contributions to Mono in exchange from litigation immunity for Mono on patents. Hell, even go so far as to help Microsoft get J# J2SE 1.4/1.5 compatable or something.
IBM would be better off working on an existing open source VM and slowly moving Java-the-language to another VM that is not controlled by a rival. Hell, maybe even parrot.
Re:Just wondering (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not very important for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sounds good (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not very important for me (Score:2, Interesting)
Not a very bad idea actually, there are a lot of knowledge about it and it saves you time to develop your own. You might go with other languages too naturally, like Python and such.
OpenSource susbtitute of agreement between company (Score:5, Interesting)
Do they arrive to a private deal? Or they arrive to a deal with the benefit of everyone, in opensource-way?
Yay! (Score:5, Interesting)
We want Java's greatest supporters on one line, so they can face the growing competition of C# instead of bickering among themselves about whose VM/Gui toolkit/IDE/Compiler is the best.
Getting an OSS Java is just a nice bonus.
Re:Not very important for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Um. An? (Score:3, Interesting)
In addition to that, the OSS community will have to implement the missing pieces. I just wonder how much is the licensing cost and restrictions of IPRs included in a full J2EE environment - that may still be a showstopper for some Linux distributors.
Finally get a good cross-platform GUI? (Score:2, Interesting)
Would this help with M$'s plans to pull their JVM? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:NOT free enough (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, it's non-free/evil/etc. For those of us that like debian and need java, it gets the job done. [Please note use of "like" vs "need" in the above sentence. One implies a preference, the other implies a (temporary) work necessity.]
Re:Mad Hatter (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM is quite interesting to watch. They've largely thrown their weight behind Linux. The also holding the high cards at the Java table. They are trying to leverage their chip advantage to get Sun to meet their demands. Iterestingly, they also are a big investor in the whole Novell/SuSE/Ximian deal, the people leading the
My take on the situation: Linux is at the point where it needs to rally behind a driving force. I'm all for choice and all, but you don't beat Microsoft by constant infighting and fractured ideas. As the old saying goes, united we stand but divided we fall.
I think IBM should outright buy Sun. Sun is failing and would be a cheap aquisition. Waiting any longer will just give Microsoft a bigger advantage as the
On the development side, I believe it would be tremendous if IBM (with Sun and Ximian under their wings) would step up and iron out both Java and Mono, along with providing a tight IDE with Eclipse. This could make Linux the development platform of choice.
Of course, development isn't worth much if you don't have an installed base to deploy to. With Novell/SuSE/Ximian, IBM could generate a nice, consistent, integrated desktop environment and provide the corporate sway in convincing businesses to switch from Microsoft.
In short, I think IBM has the most incentive to see Microsoft fall from dominance. They've shown their willingness to get behind an open platform. The community should show their support and get behind IBM. It will yeild the greatest long term benefit.
Re:Not very important for me (Score:4, Interesting)
Benchmarks:
Overall, according to this benchmark, Java scored slightly higher [bagley.org] than scripting languages. But if you consider memory usage [bagley.org], Lua/Python/Perl/Ruby all blow Java out of the water.
Re:IBM may already have Java libraries ready... (Score:1, Interesting)
I hate hearing stories of great software written to deal with a tough problem, then left locked up somewhere never to be seen again.
IBM has put Sun in a corner (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, you can't really say "No", can you ?
Think about it.
If you did, you'll sound unreasonable & stubborn. People may suspect you have something fishy going on, that absolutely prevents you from even talking about it.
So you are forced to say "Ok, lets talk".
Standard management tactic.
IBM has a $96 share price with 166 billion market cap. When they say "Lets talk about it", someone worth only 5 bucks a share and two quarters of operating losses is forced to say "ok".
Good for the goose (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not very important for me (Score:4, Interesting)
Using the GPL guarantees that any non-private forks can later be merged (consider gcc/egcs). Practically speaking there are few incentives to maintain a separate fork.
IBM is *NOT* Santa Claus! (Score:3, Interesting)
Follow the money.
NeWS as Open Source? (offtopic) (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in May 2000 (longer ago that I thought), I looked into this. I didn't really find any good clones of NeWS, but I was wondering whether Sun might consider open-sourcing NeWS since it had long since lost all commercial viability.
I ended up contacting James Gosling at Sun, who was the original author of both NeWS and Java, to ask him whether it might be possible for Sun to open the old source code to NeWS. His response was that he had already tried to make it happen several years before, but the source code was lost! Apparently the only source they could find was the NeWS 2.0 bastardized combination of X11, NeWS and Adobe's Display PostScript. The source to the original clean NeWS 1.1 release was nowhere to be found!
After a couple weeks of research, and asking a number of people, I found some leads on a couple places that might have had copies of the NeWS 1.1 source code (there were a few sources licensees around), so maybe it could have been repatriated back to Sun. The source may not be "lost to the ages" entirely after all.
Unfortunately, it seemed that James Gosling had by this time lost interest in pushing for NeWS to be released as open source, because he feels the world has moved on and PostScript is no longer the approach he would favor for a GUI system. While he's not opposed to the idea, it takes someone pushing internally to make it happen, because it takes time and effort to scrub the code for release, get approvals from executives and lawyers, etc.
Perhaps if enough people would take an interest in lobbying Sun for the release of the source, NeWS itself (the real thing) could potentially be released as open source someday, assuming the source can be recovered. If anyone is interested, please feel free to email me [mailto] about it.
Alternatively, I have to wonder how much of the functionality of NeWS already exists in Ghostscript. Perhaps it would be feasible to adapt Ghostscript into a NeWS clone, and it probably has better rendering code than NeWS did. It might be an interesting project, though perhaps a daunting one...
Sun and IBM Questions (Score:5, Interesting)
The specifications are controlled by the JCL. Sun has a never-used veto power that allows them to keep control of the trademark. Can this be more "open"? Java is a programming language being designed by a committee. Do you really want everyone in the world to be on the committee?
Are they talking about the StandardEdition, or every version of Java? If SUN will lose the revenues from the cell phone makers, this is not feasible.
Are they talking about releasing the JVM under the GPL? Why does IBM need SUN to help with this? IBM has their own JVM that was faster than SUN's JVM (from my own experiences using JVM 1.3.) Is there a reason that IBM cannot GPL their version? IBM has been trying to wrest control of Java from SUN for years. Could IBM GPL their JVM and force the issue for SUN?
Is the issue that SUN should be the one to dual-license the code so that GPL'd code changes can be added to the commercial branch? I am not clear about the legality of that.
The only real issue seems that OSS needs a freely redistributable JVM to include with Linux distros and other software. OSS is good so debugging can see further down, although that can be difficult when the layers change language. A GPL'd JVM might be forked over features as well as implementation, but implementations have already forked, and Sun can control the features by not allowing their trademark to be used for non-compliant VMs. Please reply with clarifications.
IBM , troll or Arch angel? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course they definitely aint in the MS (bad) league by my standards, they've done more good than bad for the technology as far as i know.Ok so they wanna make a few bucks on the way, thats not all that bad is it? I'd say angel(maybe i just like the color blue.)
Money (Score:5, Interesting)
Fair's fair IBM. If Sun offers Java then perhaps you should volunteer WebSphere!
Hopefully, this will help improve J2EE... (Score:4, Interesting)
Let Java Go! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not very important for me (Score:5, Interesting)
And methinks this is where IBM is even more on SUN's side than SUN itself.
Think what needs to be the replacement for mountains of COBOL on mainframes.
I'm no expert on Java, but every time I look at it I get visions of gaggles of mainframes. (No I don't mean clusters. Clusters are a cheap hack to pretend to a non-existant level of reliability).
I'll join an open source effort (Score:4, Interesting)
If Sun and IBM work on an Open Source Java, I'll work at merging the project I maintain with their efforts.
http://www.rxtx.org
Sun's license issues have been problematic for our project. I look forward to an Open Source Java.
Re:NOT free enough (Score:2, Interesting)
add:
deb http://www.tux.org/pub/java/debian sid main non-free
to your sources.list and (same goes for j2sdk1.4):
kistl:~# apt-get install j2re1.4
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
gsfonts-x11 j2se-common
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gsfonts-x11 j2re1.4 j2se-common
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
81 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 21.4MB of archives.
After unpacking 54.6MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
Excellent publicity. (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing that needs to be said is that this is worth millions of dollars in free publicity for IBM. There are many programmers who, before IBM started supporting Open Source, would not have considered working for IBM.
I'm not saying that IBM is asking for Java to be Open Source because of publicity. But that support has a wonderful side-effect for the company.
It's great to have a large organization like IBM that can use its voice to do something that has long been needed. The world needs better GUI support for Java.
We need true native Java compilers, so that it is not easy to de-compile [program-tr...mation.org] Java, as it is now. (I get the impression that GCJ [gnu.org] merely makes calls to libgcj, as the home page says, and is therefore easy to decompile. Does anyone know if that is true?) Business logic is very easy to steal through de-compilation.
Too Free? (Score:5, Interesting)
These corporate IT shops think they have leverage over the big-$$ vendors by virtue of the fat checks that they can hold back (sometimes true, sometimes not). No check, no leverage, no support.
The reality is that much of IT is about budgets, not technology. Senior managers still work with money long after whatever technical skills they had are gone, so that's the club they use on vendors.
Re:Not very important for me (Score:3, Interesting)
They've gotten better. However, this is only a very very recent development.
My plan for xplat compat is to test every day on both platforms so incompats don't creep in.
Good plan.
Re:Not very important for me (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the question is how to kill the "Write Once, Run Everywhere" idiom. Java is a nice object oriented C language, but all of the VM, non-native UI, swing and other bagage is the problem with java. Dump the bagage and just compile java. Or I guess you could just move to Objective C and be done with it.
Re:Not very important for me (Score:4, Interesting)
If they simply wanted some proprietary ultra-fast Java that noone else has the sources to, they could have done so without pissing off Sun. They could have provided their extensions as DLL's called via the Java standard JNI mechanism.
Even when Sun sued them, what did Microsoft do? Used it as an excuse to bail out of providing an up-to-date standard JVM for Windows, which effectively killed Applets as a viable alternative. (Combined with Sun's idiotic approach of bloating the JDK with every single library. Nowadays it even includes an XML parser. Not many people wanted to download tens of megs on dialup just to run a stupid applet.)
Basically again: Microsoft didn't want to have a super-product and/or make money, it wanted the Java market to fragment and die.
So what's going to keep them from using Open Source to that end? So people are going to get the sources to Microsoft's fork. So some of them will get ported to Linux. All the better, no? It's just helping the fragmentation to spread farther, no?
In fact, if I was Bill and wanted to see Java dead, I'd make sure there's not just one GPL fork. I'd make sure there are 5 fundamentally incompatible GPL'ed forks! And that you need to explicitly check which version of Java and which OS you're running on, to have your program run at all.
Heck, I'd even pay some third party to port some of that incompatible stuff to Linux. As part of some MS utility pack for Linux or some such.
Re:Probably too little, too late (Score:4, Interesting)
Why on earth would MS want to do that? Don't you think that they already would have done so?
The only reason that the MS VM is at the level that it is (1.1.2, iirc) is because that's the last version that they developed that they can ship, having lost the court case that Sun brought against them. Now, I don't know the exact terms of the agreement, but I suspect that it simply prevents them from shipping an infringing JVM. I would have thought that they would be free to remove the code that broke the licence in the first place, but they have chosen not to.
Instead, they've developed an entire VM-replacement (the CLR) and Java replacement/competitor, C#. J# is intended as a stepping-stone to get Java developers to migrate to C#, in the same way that VB.NET is generally regarded as being intended to lure VB developers to migrate to C#, and Managed C++ to lure C++ developers to C#.
If they shipped a modern, fully-compliant version of J#, Java developers would have less reason to change to C#. I don't think that's what MS wants.
It's realism, not idealism. (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now I won't use Java because I write GUI intensive applications that are slow and quirky in Java. When Java is Open Source, I will still be able to write proprietary applications in Java, just like I can write proprietary applications using GCC.
The concerns of the Java community are real. Yes, there is idealism, but it is mostly realism. Java cannot fulfill the world's needs for it until it is free from the control of one company.
Don't people remember Visual J++? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, what Microsoft sells/gives away won't be "real Java" and won't pass Sun's compatibility tests, but being Microsoft, they'll seduce enough individual developers and corporations into using their incompatible extensions to ruin "write once, run anywhere" forever.
You might argue that if Java is GPL'd, we could add those extensions to the free version, but what if the extensions are very Windows-specific? Extensions that wouldn't even make sense on a Linux box? Or that tie into other closed Microsoft products, like Windows Media Player, or Microsoft's particular DRM scheme?
But if someone uses 'em in an app, that app is locked onto Windows forever.
ESR has really hurt the OSS community (Score:2, Interesting)
No, ESR's comparison of stock price aren't what did it. They just made him look like an idiot, but his statements really put into question the benefits of open source software.
First, there are open source versions of Java. The problem is, as they are now, they are no where near as good as the "commercial" implementations. ESR begging Sun to open source Java is pretty much an admittion that the open source community cannot develop on it's own something as good as what Sun has developed.
Java is a very popular language. Look at the statistics, more people are using Java than most other free languages such as perl and php. More companies are looking for people with Java experience rather than other languages as well including python. This is fact and I've linked to articles that show the statistics. We're not talking about small differences but orders of magnitude.
What ESR, and others in the OSS community are saying is "Give us Java or we won't use it and you'll suffer". How is this not extortion? As many people that actually work with Java on different platforms can tell you, it is possible ot develop on linux with Java. You don't have to pay anything to do it though you just can't distribute the JDK and JSDK free.
This isn't the first time that ESR made promises that OSS would help a company/technology. Look at netscape. ESR lobbied very hard in the OSS community to get people to join the mozilla project in the beginning. That never really happened. While people do help Mozilla now, it didn't benefit Netscape. Mozilla has also failed to even surpass Netscapes puny browser market share. The OSS model does not always work and ESR has helped prove this.
What has the open sourcing of Netscape done? It's given the OSS community a free commercial software package. What did Netscape gain? Nothing. If Netscape (and related partners/owners) didn't finance the mozilla project for so long, Mozilla wouldn't even be where it is today.
What about OpenOffice? Would it be where it is today if it wasn't developed as a commercial project, then bought and open sourced? Do ANY of the completely open source office suites come close to doing what OO.org does? No they don't. And you're kidding yourselves if you think they do.
It's not to hard to read between the lines and see that if OSS really did work, then they wouldn't need Sun to set Java free. If OSS did work, Gnu Classpath would be a lot further along than it is today.
Are there exceptions to this? Apache is a great OSS project but how would it have turned out if it didn't get the corporate support it did? The Linux kernel? The mother of all OSS projects. Does this now give validity to SCO's claim that OSS can't do it alone and does need help from a successful commercial entity? (How SCO thinks they are a successful commercial entity is another matter) I don't believe SCO has a valid claim but ESR's letter doesn't help at all.
If OSS was so great, they wouldn't need Sun to release Java, they would have made their own OSS Java that people would want to use. But they haven't. They're working on it. But it's not there yet. According to ESR they need the boost of Sun's source code. Tell this to the GCJ team. I think they'd be quite put off by it.
Now how can one claim that the OSS community will do great things for you? It just doesn't make any sense.
It's also clear that the majority of people don't contribute to OSS projects, they just use them. Most don't even participate in improving the project by submitting bugs.
I think the OSS community is finally realizing that Java is an important technology. They want to start taking advantage of Java. But the current licensing goes against their Free Software values. My suggestion is this, download and install java. It's pretty easy. Download and install tomcat and start working with the technoligies. I think you'll be very plea
Sun Sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's realism, not idealism. (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Out of 7 JVM's on multiple OS's only ONE JVM displayed gui development poorly. That was Microsoft's JVM. All the rest looked EXACTLY the same. Some were slower than others, but only the Microsoft one acted plain wrong.
2. When I used an X/Y layout manager stuff would not behave as expected. When I went to any other layout manager they worked well.
My issue is with point one above. I had a HUGE battle because "The Microsoft JVM was already loaded on every machine". The developers who were not Microsoft lackies had to fight hard to get another JVM loaded. For everyone who wants an "Open Source JAVA", I have the question. What happens when Microsoft ships a version that is poisioned and acts differently? We the client side Java developers will have to make a choice, and unfortunately for a lot of shops that would mean using Microsoft's Java.
Re:Not very important for me (Score:3, Interesting)
all microsoft has to do is roll out a GPLd but incompatible jvm to kill the whole show. Lets imagine... "Microsoft J++" with direct hooks to msvcrt.dll, mfcxx.dll and mdac 2.8. Just use these functions to decrease your time to market by 9 months... at the cost of not being able to run your "java" app on any platform that does not have microsoft dlls installed.
think about it.
Linux/GPL community into native, not WORA? (Score:2, Interesting)
Will Java going GPL open up the floodgates to lots of Linux C/C++ coders who are more into native compilation, and not Sun's "WORA" agenda of VM's and bytecode?
{Evil Cackle} (Score:3, Interesting)
Aggressive moves by IBM to opensource things as important as Java are no surprise to me (It would be a sort of poetic justice after MS tried to bastardize it). I can easily see the industry as a whole ganging up on Microsoft. For IE alone, Gates deserves to be glove-slapped, Bugs Bunny style.
What, I wonder, would(will?) Microsoft do when their backs are thoroughly against the wall? Would they realize the flaws in their reasoning and throw their resources into creating something that truly bestows FREEDOM? Would they rev up the FUD machine until it overheats and explodes? Would they sob like horrified toddlers and pull a SCO?
The near future looks messy indeed, but in the end, bright. I hope Sun decides that IBM's idea is in their best interest. I like Sun. They've been doing their best, and need something to rejuvinate them. Opensourcing Java would at least give them colossal mindshare.
--
It'll be a kick in the groin for MS & .NET (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is an IBM move against Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
On top of that, a lot of universities use Java as the teaching language for CSE, making Java the language of choice for many recent graduates. It's funny how familiarity works.
And I don't think MS can pay schools to use
I attend the University of Washington, where we have buildings named Paul Allen, Mary Gates and William Gates (who is also on our board of regents). I mean we're as close to sold as you get.
Re:Um. An? (Score:3, Interesting)
There should be a simple, dedicated screenshot page not cumbered by noise such as descriptions of architecture, design, etc.
And, if a screenshot takes more than 5 seconds to find, it is too much.
Reverse Engineering/decompiling/GCJ (Score:3, Interesting)
There are Java bytecode obfuscators out there that will foil at least some decompilers. Using a class file compressor that makes class, method, and field names as short as possible will make the decompiled Java bytecode about as useful as dissasembled native code.
If you're relying on nobody being able to decompile your code, native compilers won't help you much. Native code can be disassembled.
Most companies don't even strip their native binaries before shipping them. Reverse-engineering is a non-issue for most companies or else they realize that it takes far less energy to break most ant-reverse-engineering measures than it takes to create them.
Decompiling is really a non-issue for 99.9% of potential users.
I've used GCJ some before and lurked a little on its developer's mailing list. GCJ is just another front-end to GCC. GCC has a C front-end, a C++ front-end, a Fortran 77 front-end, etc. The "source code" GCJ takes in is either Java byte code or Java source code and generates RTL code. The GCC back end then translates the RTL code into native code just like it would if you had started with C++ code (Java objects are treated almost identically to C++ objects internally). libgcj is simply a native Java runtime just like libc is a native C runtime. libgcj contains code for all of the Java 1.1 standard library. libgcj has things like System.out.println() whereas libc has things like fprintf().
GCJ "merely makes calls to libgcj" in the same sense that g++ merely makes calls to libstdc++. What is it exactly that you think a compiler and runtime system do?
Have you ever done any Win32 assembly programming? A good percentage of your code tends to end up looking like assembly glue code for a lot of the Win32 C library code.
libgcj does contain a java bytecode interpreter because it needs to be able to load and run arbitrary class files at runtime that might not be available at compile time. However, it would be much much slower than a modern JIT JVM if it interpreted all of the classes.
GCJ binaries might even be a little harder than g++ binaries to reverse-engineer due to the automatic garbage collector jumping in and taking you on tangents every once in a while.