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IBM Java Programming

IBM Collaborating With Open Source Java Project 149

Posted by Zonk from the big-corp-and-little-guy-working-together dept.
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,"
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IBM Collaborating With Open Source Java Project More

IBM Collaborating With Open Source Java Project

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  • Eclipse? (Score:4, Informative)

    by VolciMaster ( 821873 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:28AM (#13135007) Homepage
    This should line up with their efforts with Eclipse, too. I might get into a little Java programming if the environment were open-source.

    • Re:Eclipse? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Rhoon ( 785258 )
      I always thought Eclipse was open source... I could be wrong on that. I do however hope they plan on making the Java Doc inside the code better than Eclipse's piss poor attempt(was there even an attempt?). There wouldn't be a need to write tutorials on how to use the SWT/JFace APIs if the Java Doc was complete... or even there in some cases.

      • Re:Eclipse? (Score:5, Informative)

        by LDoggg_ ( 659725 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:40AM (#13135126) Homepage
        Eclipse is indeed open source.
        In fact, fedora core 4 comes with a natively compiled version of eclipse and a 100% open source jvm implementation.
        Still needs quite a bit of work, but has definetly come a long way

        • Re:Eclipse? (Score:3, Informative)

          by superpulpsicle ( 533373 )
          Need I mention the Eclipse that natively comes with Fedora redhat core4 crashes the OS immediately on execute. So many forums out there cover the hardcore details. To sum it up, Fedora core grows faster than people can test it. It's becoming M$-ish buggy.

          • Re:Eclipse? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by delire ( 809063 )

            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.
          • Crashes the OS?

            I have found it to be too buggy to use for java at work, so I'm still doing most development using regular eclipse on top of the Sun jvm.
            Never had it crash the entire OS.

            Only played a little with the c++ dev environment, so I can't vouch for stablility there.
            I am looking forward to trying out native eclipse to do some php development once phpeclipse.sourceforge.net upgrades to the 3.1 eclipse version from 3.0.x

    • Re:Eclipse? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by halivar ( 535827 )
      I might get into a little Java programming if the environment were open-source.

      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.
      • Not mono but "the original" without regard to open source or not, and I was horrified.

        All good style from the Java world (that I have grown accustomed to after 5 years of java, done 10 years C++ before that) is gone, the .net class library is a horrible mess, C# has awful style and features. For quite normal file handling stuff I had to resort to the JNI equivalent to bind WIN32 API calls. I can't stand the getters and setters, the capitalized method names, the absense of checked exceptions, and operator o
    • And can be built and run on a completely OSS Java stack using GCJ, thanks to the work of a whole bunch of guys at Red Hat.

      It ships with Fedora Core 4 as the main IDE and Red Hat sells commercial support for it as Red Hat Developer Suite.

  • What is the relationship between Harmony and Kaffe [kaffe.org]? Anybody know?

    • Kaffe started before anything and had a company behind it at one time. Then GNU Classpath started and Kaffe joined that effort. Now Harmony has arrived and they are going to use GNU Classpath, and Kaffe fokes are helping with the design. If that answare your question.
      • You mean both Classpath and Kaffe will be relicensed under the APL?
        • You mean both Classpath and Kaffe will be relicensed under the APL?

          I don't think that's a "given" at this point, but some of the people who are involved with both Classpath and Kaffe, have expressed support for, and interest in, Harmony. Whether that will extend to those projects actually offering their code to Harmony or not, is still up in the air, AFAIK.

    • Re:harmony / kaffe / sablevm (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not to mention the sablevm project, who already collaborate with Classpath...

    • Once I found the Harmony site from someone else's post (hint: it's in the Apache incubator, not a full-fledged project yet), I saw this in the FAQ:

      13) Does this compete with Kaffe and Classpath?

      People from Kaffe and Classpath are helping start this project! Their experience in the open source VM and class library is invaluable, and they bring problems that the larger architecture community discussion can help solve.

      We will have an implementation under the Apache License, but we think of this as comp

  • Talk about fragmenting the standard... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jarich ( 733129 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:35AM (#13135075) Homepage Journal
    Sun's reasoning for not open sourcing Java is that they didn't want to fragment the Java language with competing verions of Java.

    Looks like ~not~ open sourcing Java is fragmenting the Java language after all!

    • As Sun is still controlling what can be called Java and what not I don't see a reason why this would lead to fragmentation, as I don't see why Sun open sourcing it would have let to fragmentation.

      • Re:Talk about fragmenting the standard... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:53AM (#13135243) Homepage Journal

        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.

        • "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."

          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 pus

        • JVM versus platform (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          One of the things muddling any discussion of this type is people who forget the Java VM, or rather the Java language, and the Java platform, or rather the language plus the Java class libraries, are very different.

          The language is not simple, but it is well documented and understood. Creating a JVM which is absolutely correct and compliant with Sun's is not hard.

          What is hard is implementing the class libraries. These are huge, beastly, and not all that clearly documented. And unless you count gnu-classpath
          • Once Sun realizes that they're at real risk of fragmenting the community and having the entire linux/open source world switch to their own homebrewed class library if they don't do so, they might consider it.

            Rubbish. 'fragmenting the community' is nothing to do with open sourcing Java. I also think that 'linux/open source' is a geekcist remark, and I won't tollerate geekism. Not everyone in these communities agrees with that, I would say most would choose the cowboy neal option in a poll and carry on writ
        • Harmony has a goal of being compliant with Sun Java and that's one of the main points of the project, a completely 100% compliant open source JVM. If anyone's going to use it in business or enterprise level applications it's going to have to be compliant and as polished as the Sun JVM. IBM isn't going to attempt to put SWT into this JVM as the vast majority of people in the Java community have realized that SWT is a huge mess and it's currently running into tons of problems because of the architecture IBM
          • I don't think IBM would try and include SWT instead of Swing, but they might try and include SWT in addition to Swing.
            • Agreed, I also believe this is more likely. However, I think it would be a big drawback if the new open source JVM was more bloated than Sun's current JVM. A lot of people are becoming more and more angry and vocal about the bloat that is being included directly into the JVM and the base class libraries. I mean they're including a JavaScript engine in the next release you couldn't get much more overkill than that.... Was dropping a Jar from one of the many available JavaScript engines into the project to
        • 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.

          Do you have an example? I have never found this; even substantial applications like NetBeans run on different VMs, and even different vendors VMs.

          Don't forget that IBM is still pushing their non-Java SWT instead of Swing.

          Apart from the fact that few people are using SWT, it is not an instead-of situation; any distribution of Java called Java has t

    • Re:Talk about fragmenting the standard... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ballstothat ( 893605 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:45AM (#13135169)
      I completely agree with Sun's stance on not fragmenting their code. While their licensing isn't agreeable, there are millions of java powered items out there. If Java turned into a bunch of different flavors (insert mocha, vanilla, hazelnut joke here), then it would be a headache.

      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.

      • Re:Talk about fragmenting the standard... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Just look what happened to C!

      • Talk about missing the point!

        The person you are replying to was pointing out that Sun's stance causes fragmentation of the Java platform.

        Pointing out that Sun not wanting to fragment the Java platform is entirely beside the point. The best thing they could do to avoid fragmentation would be to make their implementation open-source. Anything else, and it will force many people to create new implementations rather than use Sun's.

    • Re:Talk about fragmenting the standard... (Score:5, Informative)

      by luiss ( 217284 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:05AM (#13135380)

      This project is implementing a Java Virtual Machine. How in the world does this fragment the Java Language any more than let's say Apple or IBM's many JVM implementations?

      Now, if Harmony intends to "extend" the Java Language by lets say, adding new keywords, just as Microsoft did with J++ at one point, then you can start worrying about Java Language fragmentation (in which case Sun would not allow Harmony to call itself a Java(TM) Virtual Machine).

      • No, you're not quite right. (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If you'll look at harmony's website [apache.org], you'll see that they aren't just implementing the Java Virtual Machine as you put it. They are implementing J2SE. J2SE is not just a language. It is a platform.

        Platform fragmentation is as, or more important than, language fragmentation*. A language cannot stand alone. You need libraries. Platform fragmentation is what Sun is worried about right now, not language fragmentation. The JVM is not even part of the "open source java" debate, since open source JVMs already exi
        • I think the idea behind open sourcing Java is good (be it the default JVM, the Language (?) or the platform (libraries)).

          They have stated the issue is complex, and have open sourced a heap of good stuff, including their Solaris, which has had limited exposure, but what has been seen is awesome, and I am suprised many more slashdotters don't rave about Solaris 10.

          IBM have also open sourced a lot of stuff, however cloudscape and their voice work is less fundemental (and both built on Java anyway).

          Java is a

  • Neat (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:36AM (#13135077)
    There's been this interesting and very quiet power struggle within the JCP between Sun and IBM. IBM keeps wanting to assert influence over Java and grow the language/platform in ways that they think would be good. Sun keeps trying to simultaneously
    1. keep IBM from taking the language in directions other than Sun wanted to take it in, and
    2. make the JCP a democratic and open process whereby any involved company can take the language in any direction they want.
    This isn't because Sun is evil or malicious or anything; they're just confused about what they want. They honestly want Java to be an open, democratic standard, and they honestly want to control it.

    The "control it" side of things keeps winning, because in the end Sun makes the JVM so they can technically decide what goes in and how it gets distributed.

    This is why I think Harmony is interesting. Sun will no longer control the only good JVM, and if Sun can't stay at least as good as Harmony, then Sun will no longer control the primary JVM. This makes the JCP's democratic ideals a lot more attainable because Sun's just lost their biggest degree of control. IBM trying to weigh in on the side of Harmony, given this context, makes a LOT of sense. They can begin to grow the language how THEY wanted again.

    This is going to be good for IBM, good for open source, and in the long run good for Sun once they realize that trying to control Java too much isn't really in their best interest.

    • Re:Neat (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mpcooke3 ( 306161 )
      because in the end Sun makes the JVM

      This is something I confess to not really understanding. The IBM java SDK is as good as the Sun one (probably the only other full fast implementation) why don't they release this as open source. I'd always presumed they couldn't open source is due to Java trademark rules but then if harmony is allowed to do it that can't be the reason.

      Or does the IBM Java SDK contain code they don't own and they can't be bothered to rewrite it?

      • Re:Neat (Score:3, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
        A Java implementation comes in two parts. Part 1 is the JVM. Sun have one, IBM have one, and there are a few others. This is the (comparatively) easy part. Part 2 is the huge class library. Java is a platform - people writing Java code expect everything in the class library to be available. Currently (at least, last time I checked) everyone who distributes Java distributes Sun's implementation of the standard class library (possibly modified slightly at the edges for platform integration).

        If IBM ha

    • Re:Neat (Score:2, Insightful)

      by danme ( 144941 )
      >>Sun will no longer control the only good JVM, and if Sun can't stay at least as good as Harmony, then Sun will no longer control the primary JVM.

      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?
    • I was beginning to doubt that Harmony would ever get out of the starting gate, but with IBM cracking the whip, maybe they have a chance.

      There has been some backlash over the way the Harmony project is being managed, some of it kinder [pastiche.org] than others [jroller.com].

      Personally, I agree with Charles Miller - start the project with some working code. down the road, you may have to refactor, but that's a part of software development.

  • so? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ThatGeek ( 874983 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:37AM (#13135096) Homepage

    "IBM's participation is limited to thoughts on design, but the company likely will contribute code to the project".

    I put this through BabelFish's translator. Apparently, this could be taken to mean:

    "A big company is going to do little to help out, but is willing to share credit for an open source project."

    Me? cynical? Never!

  • What about GCJ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AnuradhaRatnaweera ( 757812 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:37AM (#13135104) Homepage
    After the FSF call for volunteers [fsf.org], GNU Java compiler / VM has come of age [newsforge.com]. It was reported here [slashdot.org], too. RedHat Fedora Core 4 even includes a native version (doesn't depend on JVM, but runs as a "normal" binary) of Eclipse, compiled with GCJ.

    • Swing? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:47AM (#13135189)
      GCJ still only provides limited support for Swing. I don't think it can be said that it has "come of age" until that support is there in a form that at least remotely resembles javac.

      • Re:Swing? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Jason Earl ( 1894 )

        If you are willing to forgo Swing and use SWT then GCJ is a pretty compelling choice.

        • If you are willing to forgo Swing and use SWT then GCJ is a pretty compelling choice.

          And god forbit, your users might not be so drastically punished for your terrible error of judgement to use java to write a desktop application!

          Its a win win!

          (for completeness: swing is supposed to become better with the next java release)

      • If you take a look at the ChangeLog for GNU Classpath, you'll see a lot of work being done on javax.swing in recent weeks:

        http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/classpath/ classpath/ChangeLog [gnu.org]

        If you want javax.swing.* to be complete, why not join in and make it happen?
      • Eh? I think you are trying to compare apples and pears here. GCJ uses ClassPath, the open source implementation of the API. GCJ is, as the name implies, the GNU Compiler for Java. GCJ will never support Swing, but ClassPath might.

        I thouroughly hate Swing. It's very usefull, has great concepts of a good GUI implementation, but it forgets that about 90% of the users want their native widgets put to good use. SWT is quite enough for me. Both Eclipse and Azureus are on top of the heap for Java GUI implementati
  • Even if java isn't open source there are so many different flavors of it. It's been changed so much to allow it to fit anywhere, phones, idcards, computers. I think they already have a split java language! http://www.kunae.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
  • ...will help prevent code like this [infoether.com], too. Removing useless code can't help but improve performance, not to mention readability...

    [plug]
    Support your local open source static code analysis [pmdapplied.com] utility!
    [/plug]
  • Some sort of Open Source dating service?

  • in summary: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nickos ( 91443 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:46AM (#13135183)
    IBM says "this is what we want, now get on with making it for us".

  • Here we go (Score:5, Interesting)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:46AM (#13135184)
    The Richard Stallmans of the world have long wanted Java to be an open source language, while Sun Microsystems has said that they want to be the single point of control for the language. The biug lawsuit between Sun and Microsoft was about Microsoft making unauthorised changes to the language spec. Through the Java Community Process, Sun has allowed developers at large to make suggestions and improvements to the language if Sun approved of them. Sun controls the specification of the language and the reference JVM implimentation. The battle isn't about the JVM being open source, it's about the language specification. Sun's fear is that by opening the specification, someone's going to say "You know, I've always felt the language should have pointers", and the language will fall into Creeping Featurism the way C++ did. The recent (1.5) introduction of template-like behavior, at the demands of the "more features" crowd is already a step in that direction. No matter how you slice it, it seems we're doomed to a Java with more and more new features (remove run-time array bounds checking for performance, anyone?) and more and more fragmentation.

    • Exactly. There are a lot of programmers who don't understand that less is better. Java has already allowed too much, though my gripes are likely a little non-standard. For instance, curly braces after an if/for/while should be mandatory, not optional....

      The whole point of a language is to codify thought in a unambiguous and easy to understand manner. Having 20 ways of doing anything doesn't help. The guys who love C++ also tend to be the loudest, most obnoxious bunch when it comes to standards. If java was
    • Bullshit.

      The language is controled by the Java Community Process. That involves Sun, 3rd Party companies and community spokespeople.
  • Can someone inform you why SUN will not allow Linux distros distribute java? I know it about licensing but what is the logic behind this? If I were SUN, the distribution of java could only be good news as this would enable java spread...and this can only be good news...because it definitely helps popularize java and increases the potential for sales of other services based on java.

    That is how MS-word became popular since M$ allowed Word to be pirated. The same applied to Windows.

    • The question is why doesn't Sun let Java "go" ?

      Vendors don't put java in the "community" releases because of licensing issues (hint: not free). It's more of a philosophical thing. For the same reason you don't find mp3 players in some of them.

      I don't understand why you try to make a connection to spreading java by including it in a distro and spreading windows by pirating it. It's not the same thing. I have java on my linux system and I got legally from Sun's webpage.

      • > I don't understand why you try to make a connection to spreading java by including it in a distro and spreading windows by pirating it. It's not the same thing. I have java on my linux system and I got legally from Sun's webpage.

        The concept was about "spreading" a piece of software...not the concept of pirating vs legally obtaining a software.

        But I understand your point and totally agree with it.

        • I do agree. I think it would help Sun's case alot, especially with the development of this jvm to allow linux distros to get theirs out, if the large portion of consumers already have sun's jvm, why would they download this one? And that would help keep Sun on top.

          My sort of off-topic comment is next. Why does an open source jvm/wanting to open source the language appeal to everyone? Well okay, the idea of an open source jvm isn't so bad since with Sun's licensing, we can't get it bundled with our distros

    • Re:A question about Java (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Can someone inform you why SUN will not allow Linux distros distribute java? I know it about licensing but what is the logic behind this?

      The last thing Sun wants is Linux distros being competitive. The "let's support Linux" war was lost at Sun a couple of years ago... Java and its licensing is a weapon in that war. Why make it possible for Linux distros to legally distribute Java easily when it would take sales/support money away from OpenSolaris? *That's* why an open source Java is needed... or prefera

    • Can someone inform you why SUN will not allow Linux distros distribute java?

      Sun does allow Linux distributions to distribute Java. For example, Slackware [slackware.com] comes with the Java SDK as standard.

  • Sun, IBM, and Compatibility. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by reporter ( 666905 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:48AM (#13135198) Homepage
    According to "Sun Lashes Out at Open Source J2SE [vnunet.com]", Sun hates the Harmony project.

    Yet, IBM loves it and is now, apparently, committing to it. Once IBM backs an open-source product (e.g. Linux) and ships it to customers, then IBM ensures that the product performs flawlessly. Who can doubt that IBM is a significant contributor to the high-reliability of today's Linux build? The strength of IBM is its commitment to its customers.

    What is interesting is that, from a business perspective, there is no need for Harmony to be fully compliant with Sun's closed Java standards. The route to divergence is to (1) define a new language called "Harmony", (2) place it with a standards body, (3) maintain full compatibility with only the current version of Java (in order to support all of IBM's current customers and developers) but deliberately diverge from compatibility for future versions of Java, (4) arrange for IBM to jettison use of future versions of Java and to fully utilize Harmony, (5) generously borrow the best concepts from Java while ensuring that the word "Java" is never used (in order to avoid a lawsuit), and (6) build support for Harmony in GCC. This strategy could work.

    C# is a ripoff of Java and is quite popular.

    There is nothing magical about the Java name. Just consistently use the name, "Harmony", on this proposed Java variant. Everyone will know that "Harmony" is Java -- plus additional stuff. Even if "Harmony" is only 98% compatible with future versions of Java, "Harmony" could grab the software development if the open-source community backs it.

    • I wanted to moderate interesting but I am not sure of what you actually mean. What I understood is:

      IBM loves Java and it is committed to it.

      But IBM wants to open Java and make it incompatible, creating another free standard.

      So, who is going to be happy with this ?

      Java developers that have another standard to support (beside SWT)

      IBM, after they hurt Sun attempt to have a standard platform ?

      Will the free community be happy after every one can create their own language ? (They can already do that,

      • Are you addicted to your current language?

        The postulate was that Harmony would be compatible with the CURRENT release of Java, but would diverge in the future. This would seem to imply a rather slow divergence, with a large shared core language.

        Now personally my idea of the desireability of Sun as a language designer is such that I stopped using Java BEFORE I decided that I didn't like their EULA. (I must admit it's not a horrible EULA, but the provision that all distribution must come from Sun is one t
    • What is interesting is that, from a business perspective, there is no need for Harmony to be fully compliant with Sun's closed Java standards. The route to divergence is...

      I think that full compliance is important. There's a world of difference between getting people to use a new VM for an existing language, and proposing a new language.

      If Harmony is a fork of Java, then I want nothing to do with it.

  • Harmony (Score:2, Redundant)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 )
    And for those of us who don't read the article and don't know what Harmony is:

    Harmony [apache.org] is the Apache Foundations project to create an open source edition of Java SE (Standard Edition).


  • Harmony.. Java.. whilst you wrestle with what you ought to be and the collection of features you might someday have .Net assimilating generations of developers in the prime of their coding life- developers bringing applications to market.

    Resistance is futile..

    You too will become one with the Microsoft.. once you have kids, wives, car payments, and mortgages.

    Join us, won't you :-)
    • As a professional Linux/Unix developer in my 3rd major international corporation, I have to wonder why this obviously silly argument keeps coming up. I realize that you are probably being sarcastic, but plenty of people say the same thing, and are actually serious.

      Linux/FOSS has not only been accepted at major corporations, it's thriving. While the desktop market share of Linux may be relatively small, to suggest that this implies that no 'serious' work can be done with FOSS is simply unrealistic.

      The job

  • Good. This way a few years from now, SCO, or whoever else has bought the rights to the decrepit old proprietary UNIX I mean Java codebase can sue IBM for allegedly contributing code they didn't have the rights to to Harmony.

    I mean, nobody could build a Java virtual machine without copying code, right? That would be an impossible superhuman feat!

  • Bad sign for Sun (Score:3, Informative)

    by 0xABADC0DA ( 867955 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @10:33AM (#13135697)
    I think this is a very bad sign for Sun, because it sound to me like IBM hedging its bets for what might happen if Sun is bought out or sells Java. IBM's java virtual machine is based on Sun code, so if Sun sells the rights to Java then IBM is beholden to somebody else (maybe even Microsoft, who would buy Sun just to finally kill Java). As sad as it is to say, I think IBM sees the writing on the wall that Sun just doesn't seem like the reliable bet these days.
  • IBM already has a complete JDK which actually used to be much better than Sun's in terms of efficiency etc. (not sure how it compares right now). They could just release the whole thing as F/OSS under the new JCP rules, and create Harmony overnight. Why have they not done this yet?
  • The GNOME desktop has been looking for a managed language to make app development faster/better. Does the Apache license cause problems for this? A lot of people don't care if the FSF cares, but what does the FSF think about the Apache license?

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