Sun Releases First GPLed Java Source

An anonymous reader writes "You can now get GPLed JVM sources from Sun. Everyone seemed to be expecting the desktop version (J2SE) but J2ME has been released first. It looks to be buildable for Linux x86, MIPS, and ARM platforms. Sun now calls it 'phoneME.' Enjoy."

Re:Too little - too late

[bigtomrodney]

Not for enterprise or OEM Linux. It can now ship out of the box without any legal or community concerns, right on time for the "2007 will be Linux on the Desktop" comments. Isn't this what was wanted all along? finally it happens and everyone criticises it. At least it wasn't CCDL.

Linux is great and all

[agent dero]

Where's the love for FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD? :)

As for the "from the beginning-of-an-era dept", give me a break. This is nothing more than Sun trying to ensure that Java stays relevant, with the greatest stability of other toolkits, Mono, Qt, GTK, wxWidgets, etc. I don't have to go through hell and back agreeing to page long license agreements trying to get Mono, or Qt installed/bundled with a Linux distro.

Sun, you're a bit late.

Re:Linux is great and all

[Anonymous Coward]

You cant compare mono with the sun reference java implementation.

Saying that mono was "open" before java is utter nonsense. Mono is a community effort to create a compatible .net implementation according to the .net spec. Mono is comparable to GCJ and other open source java implementations.

The official microsoft .net implementation isn't opensource, is it ? But official java implementation of sun is.

See the difference ?

Re:Linux is great and all

[bky1701]

"Where's the love for FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD?"

Have you actually tried to compile it? I compile for my architecture (64) all the time with things that aren't made to support it. Sometimes I have to make small changes to strings, but it can't be THAT much worse installing on BSD.

Re:Its 7:00 AM and its slashdotted

[CortoMaltese]

There's a whole world of slashdotters very much awake at timezones other than EST, you insensitive clod!

Re:Its 7:00 AM and its slashdotted

[Richard_at_work]

Based on the fact that theres very rarely a drop off in number of comments being posted while the US is asleep, I dont see how your argument is valid.

requirements:

[DrSkwid]

To properly build executables for the Linux/ARM target platform, a Linux/i386 build platform must meet the following requirements:

        * Red Hat Linux distribution version 7.2 - 9.0
        * Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE(TM)) Development Kit (JDK(TM)) version 1.4.2
        * GNU Make version 3.79.1 or later
        * GNU Cross Compiler (GCC) 3.4.6 or later
        * Doxygen version 1.4.1
        * Development Kit for the Java Card(TM) Platform 2.2.1

To set up the Linux/i386 build environment, you must do the following things:

        * Acquire Monta Vista Developer Tools
        * Set Linux platform environment variables

Acquiring Monta Vista Developer Tools

To build phoneME Feature software for the Linux/ARM (P2 board) target platform, you must acquire the MontaVista CEE 3.1 ADK developer tools. [mvista.com]

Re:Mono is not compareanble either

[molarmass192]

Java is hardly what I would call enterprise ready either.

Man ... that's a +5 Funny if I've ever read one. You obviously don't work in an "enterprise". Take it from someone who does (telco), Java is used in massive deployments where Mono/.Net doesn't even make the faintest blip on the radar. There are production Java apps running with 5-9 uptimes that have been going for years.

Re:phoneME? Not Java?

[mhall119]

The name is a trademark, and I suppose Sun want to keep it for compliant implementations, as has been the case since they started licensing Java to other companies for implementation. The problem is that a restriction that you cannot change the APIs to make them incompatible with other Java implementations would not be compatible with the GPL, so the only way around this for them is to change the name for what is released under the GPL.

PhoneME is Sun's name for their implementation of the Java ME specification, not a renaming of Java. Glassfish is Sun's name for their implementation of the Java EE specification, which is also being released under the GPL. Sun will use it's trademark rights to the Java brand to ensure that only compatible implementations can call themselves Java, this is not a violation of the GPL. Anybody can fork the GPL'd source, make it incompatible, redistribute it, and call it anything they want except "Java". You will find this is the case with nearly all open-source products.

Re:Mono is not compareanble either

[Tmack]

I think it's the steaming pile of bad programmers that you're having problems with, not Java.

> Actually, I do, and I am forced to work with the steaming pile all the time

I fall into the "work for a Telco and have to deal with steaming piles of java" category as well. Yes, the developers have something to do with it, but its also the Java mentality of those developers, as well as a few wonderful quirks of the language and its environment. For starters, it seems, for our dev team at least, anything can be done in the Java world if you throw enough $$ at a "platform" or "Framework" and then spend the next several years with large teams of developers and outsourced help (India) to find that the platform/framework you bought cant actually do anything you bought it for (buzzwords), so another one must be bought to solve all the problems (rinse/repeat). They also like to over develop stuff, writing full-blown "feature" filled aps where a single line of cron and/or 5 lines of perl would suffice, and spend the next few years debugging it and restarting it every time it crashes (nightly for most). Java has also somehow managed to become the ONLY SOX compliant language in the eyes of management, possibly due to the dev team, requiring SOX related stuff (which becomes whatever someone feels is somewhat related to SOX in any remote fassion) to be put into a Java wrapper if its not already Java based so that their Java platforms can tickle it all they want.

As for the Java platform itself, one of the most common things done in my group (system ops) with systems is restarting Java aps and Java engines. Why? The ap breaks or tickles some Java bug. One nice feature in Java (or Tomcat or JBoss) we know about because of specific breakage it causes is that it keeps its own cache of DNS. The only problem being it ignores TTL and the whole thing has to be reloaded to refresh that cache. Then there are the other Java bugs that cause breakage to the bewilderment of our dev team. Load a page, it works, go back and try again a few minutes later and it crashes. Most likely a poorly written ap causing some memory buffer to overflow, but wasnt Java written to handle that sort of stuff internally so the app dev team doesnt have to worry with it??

People might see it as Enterprise App worthy, but I think it has long gone the way of PHP, where most developers have gotten lazy and sloppy. I have used it in the past, though I currently use Perl for a good number of reasons. Like any language, it has its place.

Tm

Open Source Java at SACLE

[socallinuxexpo.org]

Matt Ingenthron of Sun will be speaking at SCALE about Sun's new open-source java implementations. SCALE 5x [socallinuxexpo.org] will be Feb 10-11, 2007 at the LAX Westin, in Los Angeles.

Re:What?

[Evil Sheep]

You're thinking of windows. phoneME is the latest name for J2ME [sun.com] or Java 2 Micro Edition, the version of Java that is put on phones and PDAs.

Re:Linux is great and all

[doctor_no]

PS3 already has full-JAVA support via Blu-ray (also you can install Linux)

Blu-ray spec requires that all Blu-ray players have Java(J2ME, JavaTV API, etc.) due to future interactive menus, bonus material, etc will be done entirely in JAVA.

This is the core reason of Microsoft's opposition to Blu-ray and support of HD-DVD(which uses MS's iHD instead of JAVA) being that having a machine that runs JAVA by default and in every home can be very scary to MS.

So you shoiuld be able to make BD-J games on Blu-ray and have it play perfectly fine on the PS3 or any other Blu-ray player.

http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2005/10/we_love _bluray_java_its_perfec.html [oreillynet.com]

Re:Mono is not compareanble either

[Roman Coder]

Java is an extremely poor choice of language for desktop applications and high-concurrency network daemons. That is Java's weakness. Do not use it for that kind of application -- it will never come close to C++ in that area. Its strengths generally lie in areas where the overhead of the class libraries do not come into play so heavily -- some server-side work and servlets, and the stripped-down mobile version (that was released today).

As someone who makes his (good) income writing desktop applications in Java SE (Swing) for Fortune 100 companies, I would have to strongly disagree with this (and not just because I want to keep paying my bills either! :p ).

I (as a contractor) come to a customer site, and see crappy Swing-specific code written. Its usually the developer not knowing how to deal with multi-thread programming (event dispatch thread, etc.). I rewrite the app, it goes into production, and the user base loves it. They click on a single web link to start their app, and automatically get updates when new versions come out. They can run it on multiple OSs too (music industry companies use lots of Macs (for example)). Its performance is comperable to other apps running on their OS/desktop.

Java (and Swing, or if you prefer SWT) is more than fast enough to do the job, is very powerful and is allot easier to write to than 3GL languages. But like with any tool (or weapon), you need to know how to use it to use it effectively. And that can be said of any computing language, both 3GL and well as 4GL.

I don't mean to be insulting, but it seems like you really don't know what you are talking about. I would even argue that (especially for businesses) it is the BEST choice of language to write applications in. No idea about using it for writing a game and such, but if you're looking for a 4GL (PowerBuilder) type replacement, its the best out there (even though its really a 3 1/2GL language).