Sun's Java Will Be Free This Year

Ian Whyde notes that Sun is finally coming to the end of its struggle to open up Java completely. Simon Phipps, the chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems, said: "There were a couple of holdouts there. One was the area to do with raster graphics and 2D graphics. That turned out to be owned by a company that didn't want us to release that code as open source. We negotiated with them and because they've said 'yes, you can open source the code'... The only element that's left now is actually a sound-related component within Java. We finally decided that the vendor that's involved there just isn't going to play ball and we're rewriting the code from scratch. That's going to be done within the next couple of months." In another sense the milestone of a free Java was reached this week when IcedTea passed the rigorous Java Test Compatibility Kit.

two months for rewriting code?

[crazybit]

Why don't they just optimize the needed lines from IcedTea and glue them to their licensed code?

isn't that supposed to be the way OSS benefits the community?

Don't rewrite, just remove it!

[Daniel Phillips]

We finally decided that the vendor that's involved there just isn't going to play ball and we're rewriting the code from scratch. That's going to be done within the next couple of months.

One of the major benefits of releasing something into open source is the volunteer help. Don't hold it back just because a relatively small component needs to be rewritten. Remove the component again, leaving stubs, and just explain what it's supposed to do. For something as major as a GPL Java, the component will be rewritten by volunteers in no time at all, plus a small well defined project like that is a great way to get up to speed on a new code base.

I hope

[dwalsh]

... people recognize the scale and generosity of what Sun have done in GPL'ing their crown jewel.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to take away from the great collaberative thing they've done. They are definitely pulling their weight. However, you should realise they don't do this because they are a charity. They do this because they think it will give them commercial gain.

It's main benefit is it becomes much safer to rely on Java than on DotNet. Once Sun has done this you can commit to their platform knowing that they cannot take the rug away from under your own software. That's a promise which makes Sun Java much more attractive.

Re:Why Sun's Java?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Multiple, parallel versions splits development efforts. It also splits QA efforts, and makes support for both versions problematic. It's usually much safer to have a primary release and branches to test new features, rather than being forced to rewrite from scratch. I give good credit to Sun for doing this: it's one of the missing Java support components for the open source world, and should allow inclusion of actual Java in distributions such as Fedora and Mandriva, saving us serious pain maintaining multiple, slightly conflicting versions in different locations for different packages. And it should make OpenOffice installations much smaller and more efficient.

Re:The company that owns the sound support stuff

[frodo from middle ea]

Yes , bad mouthing a company without knowing anything about it, that's the way we can get companies to be more OSS friendly. Way to go.

Re:Obsolete

[Marcus Green]

Yes of course Java will be declared obsolete this year. As one of the top most in demand tech skill on the planet all the usuers are furiously swapping to make sure they convert to product Y by the end of the year and abandon the last ten years of development. (try typing in the word Java to a job search engine, then type in your favorite skill de jour)

It's good news

[bogaboga]

Once again, I thank SUN for all efforts in this direction. My request to other OSS evangelists is to let existing Open source implementations of Java die so that efforts can be spent on this SUN implementation alone. The availability of multiple implementations of the same idea is not getting us very far so far. I hope we have learned from this.

JAVA Stock will be free this year, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun's stock is likely to be free this year, too. As if being 95% off its 2001 price back in 2007, Jonothan Schwartz's brilliant renaming of the ticket and 4:1 reverse split has accomlished an almost 60% loss of value in the last eight months.

With this idiot at the helm and the board which obviously could not care less what happens at Sun, I wouldn't doubt if the current price ($2.85 in pre-reverse-split prices) drops another 50% by 2009.

Re:No please! LET IT DIE!!!

[c0p0n]

Applets? Do you think that's what Java is used for these days? Have you been in hibernation, or serving time?

Re:Next Question...

[Cal Paterson]

So servers using more than ~3.whatever GB of RAM is a "small subset" of what Java is used for?

And in five years time, you will feel the same way?

Re:I hope

[dwarfking]

Which is exactly why they should do it, considering that Sun is a for-profit publicly traded company. Commercial gain is what they are supposed to do.

It will be interesting to see where this all leads.

Re:Next Question...

[Mortice]

Unless the sysadmins are loading up sites using Java applets on those servers, there won't be a problem.

Re:two months for rewriting code?

[TheSHAD0W]

Or just post it with dummy code for the audio, so the community will be able to contribute working code? If you're going to post it as open-source, why not let that work for you, too?

Re:This is Great News (I'm a .Net/Mono Developer!!

[Anonymous Coward]

concerning the gui Mono just 'feels' more responsive than Java

You might want to check out something that isn't Swing then, for example SWT, or perhaps Fenggui. Although Swing is far better integrated with the native platform in the current Java release, you're probably talking about the programming rather than the L&F.

Re:JAVA Stock will be free this year, too.

[williamhb]

It's amazing. Millions of people around the world, using their product, and they still can't make good money off it. Granted, they give it away for free, but there still should be a lot of money to make in support contracts.

Well, there is ... but it's money that's being made by Accenture, Computer Science Corporation, and all the other technology consultancies. That's the snag with the "GPL'ed software plus consulting" business model: sure, there is money to be made in consulting, but 90% of it will be made by established consulting companies that don't have the expensive distraction of having to write the software in the first place and can focus exclusively on the profit-making side.

Or, to put it really harshly, "There's loads of profit to be made in GPL'ed software, for everybody except the fool that's writing it." (Yes, yes, I know that's overstating it, but I thought I'd leave some mod points up for grab for the replies!)

That is nonsense.

[jotaeleemeese]

If you are a consultancy relying heavily on a given piece of software and it brakes or you need enhancements, who are you going to ask to do the work for you?

Maybe people working independently in FOSS projects do not know how to market themselves as gurus of a given project, but this does not mean some people actually doing the programming will not benefit.