What's the State of the Open Source Java Community?

mvw inputs: "These days the large JavaOne conference is taking place. The commercial and proprietary vendors will be well represented there. In addition I would love to see a discussion here, on the state of Java affairs from the open source crowd. Java is a bit special, in that it does not only represent a programming language but establishes a kind of operating system as well ('Java the platform'). And indeed this world is not fully closed there is also open source software blossoming there, ranging from the GPL to the BSD sides of the free/open source community. The Jakarta Project initiative is going the BSD license way (actually they use ASL, but it is quite close), with prominent software like Tomcat or ant. Less mentioned in the Java press IMHO is the GNU Project which working on a GPLed Java implementation, with a long list of Java programs. They even have a couple of quines in Java here."

Re:Java app servers and the GPL

[Will Sargent]

Use helma.xmlrpc.org. It's LGPL, so it won't have that problem.

Dynamo includes all kinds of GPL'ed stuff anyway: it's clearly marked where and how the code is used.

Re:Java app servers and the GPL

[staplin]

My previous company took the stance that as long as the GPL code stays in its own jar, that's equivalent to using a shared library - not a derivative work.

I believe the key here is that the linking is dynamic, not when the linking occurs.

Java app servers and the GPL

[lukemelia]

I had an interesting experience at work recently looking for an open source XML-RPC implementation to run with our (closed) application server platform (Dynamo from ATG). I'm curious how you think the GPL applies in Java where dynamic linking doesn't happen at compile-time but at run-time. Would we be in violation of the license if we used an GPL'd XML-RPC package to expose a proprietary application we wrote, all running in the context of a commercial application server?

Re: Java app servers and the GPL

[brlewis]

[IANAL, but of course you wouldn't go to Slashdot for legal advice anyway.]

There are two questions to ask yourself:

1. Would a court think that the proprietary code was a derived work based on the GPLed code?
2. Would the copyright holder think it was a derived work and sue (painful whether or not they win).

To answer question 2, ask the copyright holder. Answering question 1 is trickier. I would hope that they would base a decision on the extent that unique features of the GPLed code are essential to the functionality of the proprietary code, and not base the decision on the technicality of how/when the linking happens. But who knows?

This is why Kawa [gnu.org] and BRL [sourceforge.net] have an alternate license: no restrictions if used unchanged. This removes ambiguity about question 1, but might enable GPL circumvention via subclassing. I think exactly how to copyleft Java classes is still an open question.

Sourceforge's lively

[sachachua]

The Java trove over at sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net] seems to be pretty lively; or at least as lively as SourceForge can be after that recent interruption.

People are still dissing Java in IRC channels, but hey, Java has its uses. =)