IBM Collaborating With Open Source Java Project 149
lord_rob the only on writes "According to news.com, IBM has begun participating in the open-source Java project Harmony and intends to contribute code to the initiative, according to a Big Blue executive. At this point, IBM's participation is limited to thoughts on design, but the company has plans to contribute code to the project in the future." From the article: "We really like to see the community get started, and they're still working out the rough edges of what they want to deliver. And we didn't want to disrupt that,"
Re:Eclipse? (Score:2, Insightful)
Talk about fragmenting the standard... (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like ~not~ open sourcing Java is fragmenting the Java language after all!
Re:Eclipse? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a programmer. I've been burned by bugs in my tools before. Sure MOST bugs are my fault, but once in a while I'm pretty sure it is the tool's fault. With open source I can fix those bugs and move one. With closed source I'm at the mercy of vendors who rarely care about my project.
Then too, a lot of documentation is bad. Either it doesn't exist, or the program doesn't work like the docs say. The source code is definitive about what is really going to happen, and I can read it. IF you are not a programmer it doesn't matter because you can't read the source, but I can, so it matters.
Re:Talk about fragmenting the standard... (Score:4, Insightful)
The JRE for Windows XP is already 15.4 MB. If there was 5 different REs that I had to download to use all the Java flavors, that wouldn't be cool.
I feel that Sun's thinking is sound from a business and usefulness perspective, even if it is starting to backfire.
in summary: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Eclipse? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have read that Mono is complete enough to run VB ASP.NET applications natively on a *nix box. (But not VB GUI apps since they don't have the Windows GUI classes implemented).
As for "Open Source" bias, it ranges from a political belief that all software should be Free (Stallman), to a more practical belief that no one shoul be subject to proprietary lock-in, which is awlays a risk with a single-vendor closed product.
For some it is just the desire that software be free (as in pay no money for it).
I personally subscribe to the "Free Software" philosophy. I believe that we should always be able to see, use, and extend the code we use.
This is why whenever possible I release my code under the GPL. (Mind you, I haven't put anything out there that anyone has really wanted to use! But it is there, in no small part as payment for all the great Free Software I have been able to use.)
Re:Talk about fragmenting the standard... (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter how compliant Harmony purports to be it is still going to be different than Sun's JVM. Any sysadmin that has ever had to juggle multiple JVMs can tell you that Sun's Write Once Run Anywhere motto can quickly become Write Once Debug Everywhere.
It's also entirely possible that Harmony won't even try for complete compliance. Don't forget that IBM is still pushing their non-Java SWT instead of Swing. Red Hat already has its own Java stack that's good enough to run most Java Free Software (including Eclipse), but no one is pretending that it's Java.
Sun has stated that it doesn't want to "free" its J2SE stack because it is afraid that source availability would lead to forks. However, no fork of Sun's code is likely to diverge from Sun's fold as much as a completely new Free Software Java-like implementation.
Re:Eclipse? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why wait when Mono is open-source and C# kicks ass? I say this having done both server and GUI Java development for 5 years, and a having been a very vocal detractor of C# at its inception, until I finally tried it out.
Try Mono; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Re:Talk about fragmenting the standard... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Swing? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are willing to forgo Swing and use SWT then GCJ is a pretty compelling choice.
Re:Neat (Score:2, Insightful)
How does this differ from the incompatible Java framework released years ago by Microsoft? If Harmony takes "the lead" - will it be possible that it can be taken to court by Sun? Or is it simly because of the monopoly market situation that Microsoft is and were in?
Re:Talk about fragmenting the standard... (Score:3, Insightful)
But this is a general problem of having different JVMs. So now also having one that is open source doesn't change the situation in any way.
"It's also entirely possible that Harmony won't even try for complete compliance. Don't forget that IBM is still pushing their non-Java SWT instead of Swing. Red Hat already has its own Java stack that's good enough to run most Java Free Software (including Eclipse), but no one is pretending that it's Java."
It's possible, but not very likely considering that the statet goal of Harmony is to "create a compatible implementation of J2SE 5".
As to Red Hat, it isn't Java, because it isn't mature enough and only implements parts of the Java specs. But doesn't this example show that your worries are unfounded, as Red Hat is neither trying to create something different from Java, nor to call something Java that doesn't meat the criteria?
"Sun has stated that it doesn't want to "free" its J2SE stack because it is afraid that source availability would lead to forks. However, no fork of Sun's code is likely to diverge from Sun's fold as much as a completely new Free Software Java-like implementation."
Again, you are supposing it is a free software java-like implementation, whereas the goal is to create a free java implementation.
While you are of course right that having such an implementation would make it easier to fork Java, I don't see why anybody should try to do this, as the chances for the success of such a fork are minimal at best.
Re:Eclipse? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll say it again. Fedora will always be buggy, unstable and untested. That is what it was designed to do, serve as a community testing ground for products and services that may or may not make it into the commercially supported enterprise editions.
Redhat themselves are very clear about this on the Fedora project page [redhat.com]
Stop complaining about Fedora and get a tested, 'stable', desktop focussed distribution. Most importantly, stop encouraging those new to Linux to try it.
Re:Eclipse? (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of the commercial reason to use opensource is to future-proof yourself against long-term eventualities like this. If Java decides to stop letting you bundle the JVM with your OS, then you can't provide OpenOffice anymore without paying them. If MS stops supporting a platform, then you're screwed if there's an unworkable bug and you're stuck on the platform.
Fundamentally, when you invest labour on designing products and infrastructure based on a closed-license platform, you gain fealty to them. They now control you - they can make you lose the use of the product of your labour. They can stop providing their product, they can refuse to fix un-workaround-able bugs, or they can just go out of business and leave you high and dry.
With opensource, you can lose your support provider, but you can never lose the platform - at worst, you may have to maintain it yourself.
Yes, you may even have a solid, bullet-proof contract with your provider - but what happens when they go out of business?
Re:Eclipse? (Score:2, Insightful)
Each and every free software activist want the opening of ALL source code, no matter if they're actually wanting to have a look at it. As one of many, I don't see any area where I woudln't free my code, but unlike some, I can understand that resources may be non-free (e.g, in a videogame, while the engine should be free, say dual licenced GPL / and commercial licence for the company to make some money, like MySQL, I understand that graphics and creation, music, could be non-free). It doesn't mean music, art in general shouldn't be free but it always depends on your business model.
So to say, Free software isn't about the ability of the user to fix a bug. It's not about users at all, in fact. It's about the software itself, and its freedom. This is why we talk about philosophy when it comes to free software, since it is a movement of idea, whereas opensource is a business model that uses free software (and which was at first aimed at advertising free software).
Programming languages are not about being free. They're about being standards (good) or not (bad). People in the free software community want these languages *implementations* (ie compilers, libraries) to be free because some Linux distro (eg Debian) refuse to have non-free packages (at least in the main branch). See the Debian Social Contract [debian.org].
Re:so? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:IBM could create Harmony overnight (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Eclipse? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Eclipse? (Score:3, Insightful)