Sun Completes Java Core Tech Open-Sourcing 141
MsManhattan writes "A year after announcing its plans, Sun Microsystems has made almost all of the core technology in Java available as open-source software under the GNU general public license version 2 (GPLv2). However, some of the code remains 'encumbered'; that is, Sun doesn't have sufficient rights to release it under GPLv2, and the company is requesting the open-source community's help in resolving these issues. Rich Sands, community marketing manager for OpenJDK community at Sun, would not say what percentage of Java's 6.5 million lines of code are encumbered, but explained that it is largely Java 2D graphics technology, such as font and graphics rasterizing."
Re:Better Firefox integration? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's caused by the JVM startup. The pause can be nearly eliminated by starting the JVM with the browser. Of course, that slows the browser startup and holds onto memory needlessly. So I doubt anyone is going to bother doing that for a dead technology. (i.e. Applets)
The Sun Experiment (Score:5, Insightful)
I think most people in the F/OSS community don't see the importance of Sun's actions in the last couple of years regarding the economic viability of F/OSS.
This is a company who opened sourced (or is open sourcing right now) a very large important and complex portfolio of it's software. It is also a company which is considered a major player in its field and a lot for these software products where successfully sold for big bucks in the past.
F/OSS takes a lot of criticism regarding it economic model which most businessmen see as non existent. If Sun can pull it through and improve its financial results after making such a big commitment to F/OSS software, only than will the F/OSS community will have a winner in their hands to show off in front of skeptics. This is not the same as Red Hat who made a business out of F/OSS but a company which is rejecting the old ways of closed source and is taking a big gamble that F/OSS is not only the right thing to do morally, but that it can also become a better business model than closed source software.
Re:One word! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gnu classpath ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Help out with Harmony (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not get one open source JVM working first, and work on others later?
Thank you Sun and thank you RMS for the GPL (Score:4, Insightful)
Trolls are already in the thread saying that OOo is unusable and that (Open)Solaris is the most insecure Unix ever. The trolliest of them all even dare to say that Java is a failure... On this last point nobody should be mistaken: Java is a langage and a VM whose success is beyond any language author's wildest dreams.
As stated by James Gosling himself not long ago: it is basically impossible to do a financial transaction today without having Java involved at one point or another... And this is a Good Thing (TM) Why is the banking industry so in love with Java? The bullet-proof JVM and portability of the languages. Not a single language before Java had ever offered such an incredibly good VM running on so many different hardware/software configurations.
There are countries where tens of millions of people are carrying "Java SmartCards" on them. More than 90% of all cellphones sold worldwide have a J2ME VM (agreed: not Java's most glorious example, but nearly 20% of all games sold worldwide are little Java games for cellphones sold to casual gamers... Food for thought to anyone dismissing J2ME).
Java is a success that has grown beyond anyone's wildest imagination and it just keeps getting better and better. I was an very early Java believer (back in the days where it was really messy to do Java development on Linux) and back in the days there were many misconceptions regarding Java. Nowadays it's simply unexcusable to try to deny that Java is a huge success. Like COBOL today, Java will still be the technology making the real-world work in decades (insert your lame jokes about COBOL here... I personally laugh everytime some COBOL is involved when you're making a real-world transaction [and, yup, I've done COBOL programming]).
Note that (contrarily to C#/.Net) "Java the language" and "Java the VM" have been chosen because they were very impressive technologies, not because the company creating them had a monopoly on a certain market. C# is a copy (7 years later or so) of "Java the language", with some things done better (thankfully, 7 years later, that they got some things right
Thanks Sun.
(*) C# has then been basically forced down the throats of programmers locked in the MS monopoly. If C# hadn't Microsoft's illegally maintained monopoly (the "illegally maintained monopoly" is a fact, checks your facts if you disagree) backing it wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today.
Re:Serious question: Java, Apache 2, and GPLv2 (Score:4, Insightful)
And? Whoopdie-fracking do. Let me see if I can translate this into idiot for you:
Step 1: Go to http://java.sun.com/ [sun.com] and download a JDK.
Step 2: Ask yourself, "Did I just agree to the GPL?"
Step 3: Ponder the legal implications of never having agreed to the GPL, or in fact, having any GPLed code in your possession.
Alternate:
Step 1: Go to http://jcp.org/en/jsr/tech [jcp.org] and find the Java API you're targetting.
Step 2: Download the skeleton classes and use to create a program.
Step 3: Ponder the legal implications of never having agreed to the GPL, or in fact, having any GPLed code in your possession.
Just because Sun releases a version of the platform under the GPL does not automatically make the entire platform GPL. And in any case, the FSF interpretation of Java code has always been suspect anyway. Their interpretation of Java linking is flawed, and of dubious enforceability.
However, this has always been more of an argument for the LGPL. If you develop with a GPLed version of a JDK, one could make a weak legal argue that you're extending the GPLed code in specific, and not the specification of the code. It would probably fail to hold up in court, but the possibility is there. Which is why the Classpath project issues this clarification [gnu.org] of the license. It basically extends the OS exception to say that the Java classes are covered under similar terms. Not that it's legally necessary, as releasing the Classpath project cannot automatically make Java code fall under the GPL. But clarifies the position of using the Classpath library for development purposes. (Something which they couldn't enforce anyway.)
Unsurprisingly, Sun has the same clarification [sun.com] for the GPLed code.
Re:Mozilla Had the Same Problem (Score:3, Insightful)