Slashdot Mirror

Top 10 IE CSS Problems

PNG Support

mod_perl problems

Just a few things I've found....but, the CSS ones are the biggest bitch. I'm trying to put together sites w/o tables for formatting...but, since IE doesn't work boxes correctly...well, lots of kludging...

Is Ant better than SCONS?
http://ant.apache.org/
http://www.scons.org/

Seriously, I'm just curious. I've heard a lot more about SCONS than Ant. For instance Blender is switching over to a SCONS build system.

1.) The time required to "process" a server-side include on a non-caching, shared-hosting server is negligible. I invite you to run some timed tests with lynx.

That depends on server-load, and you need things like xbithack to get proper caching with SSI anyway.

2.) The point behind using SSI is so that, every time the template is updated, only one file needs to be updated and uploaded.

The point behind using SSI is to reduce maintenance work. This happens at the expense of server resources. For small websites, the resources saved by not uploading all the files might outweigh the resources used by the server, but that doesn't hold true for all sites.

3.) Apache runs every HTML page through the interpreter regardless of whether it actually contains SSI code.

This isn't true unless you have deliberately changed the default settings to do this. The default configuration supplied by Apache doesn't even enable SSI by default - and when you uncomment the supplied code, it only applies to files ending in .shtml. Read the config file yourself.

There is another project called Torque. It's an Apache project. You can find it here. This is a database persistence engine for Java and is very good too. I wonder which came first...

you may want to investigate doing a richer web application using newer UI level toolsets. My favorite at this point is for Java and it's called Tapestry. Therein, you will find a much richer than usual web development framework. Another one that Sun is working on is called Java Server Faces, though they're not really done with it yet and the current consensus among Tapestry folks is that, while it may be better than plain old JSP, that it's not better than Tapestry yet; but they're not biased either. ;+)

The point here is that you *can* remain in a fat/rich client environment, but if you would like to finally make the transition to a web application, it's easier than ever now. We're well past the point where everyone is writing Perl CGI scripts or Java servlets that generate all of their own raw HTML (*shudder*).

http://cocoon.apache.org/

Linux isn't all that great at sound, though the article is complete FUD. I've never had a problem running a Soundblaster card on a Linux machine. They always autodetect fine. And since Soundblaster is about the most common soundcard on the market...

Then you're quite lucky. Personally, my SB Live PCI128 has never worked quite right under Linux - at times it will just start or stop outputting sound for no apparent reason, or require that I mess with switching between 3 different sound systems before it works again.

At any rate, I've hardly ever had a linux machine with a soundcard in it. I hardly ever have the GUI enabled. If I want to play games, I use my windoze box...that's what it's there for, to be a toy.

Yes, i'm getting the idea quite quickly.

That's what Windows is for. Not to do anything real, or useful. Can't check your email on it, or browse the internet without worrying that its executing code from every damn website, or that its autorunning attachments.

Forgive me for being blunt, but if that's true, you:

A) Are someone that has a very tenuous grasp on safe computing practices, and shouldn't really be using a computer at all, much less one with Linux.

B) As you seem to be - hopelessly biased against Windows, so much so that you won't acknowledge the extremely simple solutions to the problems you mention - use Mozilla instead of IE/Outlook, and don't open strange attachments, no matter who they come from. Doing so, and using my head in general, I have not gotten a single virus on my system in 7 years and counting.

Doesn't come with any useful compilers or development tools.

And this matters to normal desktop users (and even some non-normal ones) why, exactly? News flash - not everyone who uses a computer is a freakin' programmer. I don't know why so many Linux advocates seem to think this way, and it's one of the major factors keeping Linux from widespread desktop adoption, I think.

The included webserver sucks.

So don't use it. Last I checked, Apache has a Win32 version. You seem to be looking for any reason to do some Windows-bashing, though, not suprised you'd neglect to mention that.

Windows is a toy, and it has always been a toy, and the fact that people are looking at a kick-ass powertool and complaining that it's not a toy is absurd.

Man...With people like you promoting that "kick-ass powertool", how could users not be flocking to Linux in droves, eh? For the love of $DIETY, if you're going to attempt to advocate something, get some damned tact first.

It's free, works on Windows and *nix, very popular, easy to work with (for the most part), yada yada yada

GTRacer
- Did I mention it's free?

just as I'm pulling an all-nighter at this moment trying to embed a custom search engine into an app for use on an intranet.

Actually what is more interesting is Nutch and Mozdex, which seems to be based around Lucene (what I am using to build my own search engine embedded into a Horde framework app). Although probably a lot simpler than the industrial grade stuff, for someone who has been used to throwing a word at an input screen and magically getting back results, the insight into the inner workings of search engines is very interesting.

Forrest and XMLMind

The should have used this instead Cocoon

Cocoon unlike .NET gets it right.

Requiring a proprietary protocol would work only for streaming of dynamically encoded data, such as live streaming. The server software for delayed streaming is already free and Free: just create a .ram file (similar to Shoutcast's .m3u file) giving the HTTP URL of the stream. Do you think Real could make enough money off selling licenses for encoders and live streaming servers to fund development of the player? The other players in this market can afford to finance player development from operating system revenue.

• We need to use the most expensive JSP interpreter we can find. not interpreted?
• We need to use the most expensive JSP IDE we can find. The best ide's for this are free: Netbeans and Eclipse
• We need a separate computer for each person (including those who will work primarily from their computer located off-site), plus a test server and a backup for the test server and an extra computer just in case. Have they never heard of VMWare!
• We need to make the database as related as possible - if you can make a lookup table for a Yes/No field, then by all means you should do it! This is not necessarily a bad thing
• Make sure each and every table has an auto-increment integer index, expecially those tables that will contain over 100 million records. Never use a trigger to "autonumber" rows from a sequence. This destroys all the power behind sequences in Oracle, and screws up the ability to do transactions.
• Development time must take at least 18 months to provide a proof-of-concept, but cannot produce anything that may be actually used. I don't even understand that
  

That comment makes a spectacularly bad case. It provides no analysis to back up its wild claims. Approximately zero lines of the comment has to do with the paper, which it essentially mischaracterizes.

That paper makes a spectacularly bad case

It makes a fine case. The worst part is that it exaggerates the value of its own minor insight. The grandiose title harkens to the famous "Goto Considered Harmful", which in its time was a more insightful position.

Nobody should be surprised that globally correct choices cannot be decided with only locally correct data (for a non-greedy process, of course).

Moreover, the actual problems caused by suboptimal makefiles pales in comparison to what havoc goto can wreak. Anything wrong with makefiles can be solved by Moore's law (wait for the hardware to get faster, so you can do full rebuilds quickly). But spagetti code makes it more difficult for programmers to work with software, and there has been no observed exponential growth curve of human intelligence.

people write bad makefiles

That's a cop-out. The Makefile system has turned out to be too flexible for most needs. Because the build system relies on authors of individual make, the behavior of different Makefiles can be completely different (they're arbitrary programs, after all). That problem is analogous to the non-existent "package manager" on Microsoft Windows. Each Windows installer is an arbitrary program that might do anything, and whose actions cannot be reasoned about by software tools.

Furthermore, having one makefile in every directory is an almost assurewd way to produce bad makefiles.

which apply equally to recursive and monolithic ones.

Wrong. There is an inescapable difference in the performance (both speed and correctness). Recursive simply cannot compare with monolithic.

Note that "monolithic" doesn't necessarily mean the makefile is stored in only one file on disk. A collection of files assembled via include directives is equivalent to monolithic, but somewhat easier for revision control. Non-"make" build control processes, such as Ant or those provided with some IDEs, also share the advantages of monolithic makefiles.

The software industry has already demonstrated its support for RMCH, because all new "yet-another-better-than-make" projects take its ideas as unavoidable preconditions.

Your arguments are great but they apply for almost every lanugage I know of.

As for frameworks look at apache. Have you seen how many frameworks it has for java? What about Swing, AWT, SWT etc? Just because they're are lots of frame works doesn't mean it bad.

I agree with your class as a static function library but that's not PHP's fault. C++, Java and Perl have the same problem. When people learn C or VB first and then go to an OO langauge they generally get it wrong.

As for bad projects I sure if you did an "Ask Slashdot" they'd be able to tell you about bad projects C, C++, Lisp, PHP, Java, J2EE, .NET, etc.

As for a standard was of seperating logic from content lots of people say that JSP isn't enough that's why you have stuff like Velocity and all the other framework template engines. If you want a template engine for php the default one is Smarty.

When it come down to it the problem you have with PHP is that it has a lot of newbie programers that use it. Which is good and bad. Try making a simple form in JSP then do the same thing in PHP. PHP is ALOT easier. That doesn't mean it's better but it does mean people with a lower skill can do it. I'm using templates for our internal site and when other people edit it half the time the escape and got back to raw PHP and it's a mess so I fix it up and it's all clean again but they just don't get it untill after I show them then it make sense and they can do it but the next time they can't figure it out so it happens again etc.

Does it mean you get lots of bad half baked libraries YES does it mean you get good libraries and frameworks YES (because more poeple start, so more people get good at it).

If you want to look at good php projects check out:
* Smarty
* Mambo
* Gallery
* phpBB
* JpGraph
* phpMyAdmin

That being said at what level do you move someone from a "HTML + PHP Hack" to a "Web Developer"?

What makes a lanuage "enterprise-ready"? Does an "enterprise" company just have to use it (IE Yahoo and PHP). Or does it have to have faetures?

Where I work we still use PROC and PIC which is a 40 year old language that doesn't have:
* Variable Names - Only numbers!
* Functions - Only GOTO and GO SUB (again numbers no names)
* All variables are global!
* No loops!
* No else - You have to use IF and GOTO!

Yet this is still being used in thousands of companies all over the world! Sure it's legacy but it's enterprise ready and still being used!

So could it be used on a massive site handling 1,000 of concurrent users? Yes, IF IT WAS DESIGNED IN THE RIGHT WAY. It wouldn't be the same design as you'd use for .NET or the same as you'd use for J2EE but it would work. It might not be the best but that depends on the problem. (Same as Clusters vs Grid)

I've ranted engough ... have fun pulling my comments to peices.

Can you find prior art? A published description of using a single DNS wildcard for user's subdomains prior to 8/99?

So the technology was patented or just the method? The technology is described here: RFC1034 or RFC1035

So then we need an implementation that can take advantage of multiple subdomains using a wildcard, prior to 1999. This will show it's possible to do what the patent describes without inventing new technololgy /writing new software:

Apache mod_rewrite
So in 1997 it was definitely possible.

So we need someone actually doing it, so the method wasn't invented by them either (I've only done a quick search on google here)
These two links: Google Group, and http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/417/1998/2/50 /2275350/. So there you go, prior art, or at least close enough to prior art. The can't patent this technology or idea. The best they could do would be to perhaps claim copyright on a particular implementation, but I doubt that would hold up either.

Using anything other than apache cocoon for this project is ridiculous.

Of course all the documents are/should be stored as DocBook, then the presentation layer can be handled automatically by cocoon. You could have a zillion options for output, for example:

• pure xml
• html without css
• html with css
• xhtml
• wml
• pdf
• ps
• svg
• flash

It amazes me that people always assume that what is a "feature" for one person will always break something for another...

That's why I use cocoon to do the presentation. The backend can be however it wants to be, and the front can look nice. Cocoon also makes it easy to unify diverse sources, and deal with the large variety of browsers.

Windows 2000, isn't what I would describe as multi-user

That is simply not true. Windows NT (be it 4.0, 5.0 (Windows 2000), 5.1 (XP), 5.2 (Windows 2003)) is a multi-user operating system. What you are describing is logging into multiple accounts through a GUI. Fast user switching, what you are referring to being in Windows XP and being hack and slash, is actually opening a Graphical Terminal Windows to connect to a locally running Terminal Services as another user in Windows (both (or more) users are simultaneously logged on as different users running with different credentials, permissions, groups, etc.)

This is great for a desktop computer, but is just one of the characteristics of "multi-user" operating systems IMHO. Another characteristic of "multi-user" operating systems present in Windows NT, is that you can run services (somewhat equivalent in concept and practice to *nix daemons) as users. You can run, for instance, Apache for Windows as a service under any username you want (you can create a user and Apache's documentation explains this in detail) with little to no system privileges and run Apache's service explicitly as that user. What happens is that, depending on how little access the user has to the machine, Apache, likewise, has little to no privilege to files, folders, reading, writing, executing, etc. on that machine.

Clearly versions of Windows running the Windows NT kernel, love it or hate it, are "multi-user" operating systems as IBM indicates in their article.

The parent is right. Other languages don't become fractured.

now go to the same address and do the same thing with the Java version. you should be up in under 5 minutes, if that.

So what exactly do the open source advocates want from Sun?

Nothing, really. This issue is Sun's problem, more than anyone else's. Java is Sun's baby. They want everyone to use it. Supposedly, they encourage the distribution of JVMs far and wide. It certainly weakens their "run anywhere" advertising claim if substantial numbers of PCs are without a JVM. (For example, I've noticed that more web browsers are able to play Flash than Java applets).

But yet, they don't allow Java to be installed with free linux distributions. That prohibition is bizarre, counterproductive, and boarderline hypocritical. Honestly, if they want Java applications to eventually compete with Windows apps, they'll need to enable customers to run Java apps on cheap hardware without paying the Microsoft tax. That means free Linux distribs with included JVMs.

To the extent a nebulous group like the "open source community" has an opinion, they're probably happy writing in C++ and Perl. Why would they wish to go through the huge effort you're suggesting merely to help Sun publicize their pet language, when Sun could resolve it in an instant by erasing 5 lines of license?

For instance, debian ships gcj and that is supposedly java, and also supposedly free right?

It isn't a JVM, though, so it does no good for allowing a user to quickly run a downloaded Java app. (To quickly test if gcj is "Java", go download a program which runs with "Java". Can gcj run it? No.)

Additionally, GCJ is really more of an implementation of the Java language than the Java standard library (those two things are often not sufficiently understood as distinct). The Java stdlib is enormous, and not quite frozen either. It'd take a lot of effort for reimplementations to even get full feature coverage, not to mention bug-for-bug compatibility.

"Java" is much to vague a word for this discussion.

Java is an adequately precise word. (It's a trademark of Sun Microsystems, so they can choose what it means). It means not just the compiler (which gcj replaces), but the JVM and standard classes (importantly including Swing) as well.

Apache2 itself is rather fringe still. It has approximately a 5% marketshare vs. 65% for Apache1 at the time of this and out of that I would guess the majority are running the Worker MPM. So we are talking about a fringe MPM in a fringe server.

Apache2 itself is rather fringe still. It has approximately a 5% marketshare vs. 65% for Apache1 at the time of this and out of that I would guess the majority are running the Worker MPM. So we are talking about a fringe MPM in a fringe server.

Apache2 itself is rather fringe still. It has approximately a 5% marketshare vs. 65% for Apache1 at the time of this and out of that I would guess the majority are running the Worker MPM. So we are talking about a fringe MPM in a fringe server.

Apache Cocoon can serve generated Flash and SVG from an XML stream. It doesn't seem to have matured much on mthe Flash side and there is v.little docs

There is also the Batik SVG Toolkit

Apache Cocoon can serve generated Flash and SVG from an XML stream. It doesn't seem to have matured much on mthe Flash side and there is v.little docs

There is also the Batik SVG Toolkit

IBM (and now Apache) project, Bean Scripting Framework, or simply BSF, allows embedded REXX scripts to still be used in Java programs. This is one reason why I (and others) still use (and maintain) REXX scripts from upwards of 20 years ago -- they still work, and nobody around knows what the hell they are trying to do :)

Another great tool for stress testing your site is Jakarta JMeter. Gives you a nice GUI for watching your response times plummet as your site is pummeled.

From the article:
Siege now supports a new proxy tool called Sproxy, which harvests URLs for testing. The premise behind Sproxy doesn't make much sense to me... Personally, I prefer Scout for getting my URLs, since it just goes through a site's links and adds them that way.

The advantage of using a browser to set up your test plan is that it better simulates real traffic patterns on your site. Microsoft's Application Test Center does this, and JMeter has a proxy server similar to Sproxy.

When you're trying to replicate problems with a live site, however, it would seem more appropriate to me if you could base your test on real traffic to the site. I wrote a load testing tool once that used web logs to simulate the actual traffic patterns, but it was incomplete, mostly because web logs don't record POST data. A good stress tool could come with an Apache/IIS/Tomcat plugin that recorded traffic for use in stress testing.

Another great tool for stress testing your site is Jakarta JMeter. Gives you a nice GUI for watching your response times plummet as your site is pummeled.

From the article:
Siege now supports a new proxy tool called Sproxy, which harvests URLs for testing. The premise behind Sproxy doesn't make much sense to me... Personally, I prefer Scout for getting my URLs, since it just goes through a site's links and adds them that way.

The advantage of using a browser to set up your test plan is that it better simulates real traffic patterns on your site. Microsoft's Application Test Center does this, and JMeter has a proxy server similar to Sproxy.

When you're trying to replicate problems with a live site, however, it would seem more appropriate to me if you could base your test on real traffic to the site. I wrote a load testing tool once that used web logs to simulate the actual traffic patterns, but it was incomplete, mostly because web logs don't record POST data. A good stress tool could come with an Apache/IIS/Tomcat plugin that recorded traffic for use in stress testing.

Does anyone know much about Apache James? Apache's new Java-based mail server? I've been playing around with it and it seems pretty smooth. But how does it compare to, for example, postfix?

One nice feature is that you can extend James using "Mailets" (like applets/servlets but for mail) written in java, which would be great for a java-head like myself :).

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone knew much about it/actually used it for anything. It would be nice to have a single mail server who's configuration could be used on any platform.

Here you go: http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/developer/thread_ safety.html#liblist

Does anyone know much about Apache James? Apache's new Java-based mail server? I've been playing around with it and it seems pretty smooth. But how does it compare to, for example, postfix?

One nice feature is that you can extend James using "Mailets" (like applets/servlets but for mail) written in java, which would be great for a java-head like myself :).

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone knew much about it/actually used it for anything. It would be nice to have a single mail server who's configuration could be used on any platform.

import java.util.Vector;
import org.apache.soap.Fault;

Vector theDetails = new Vector();
Fault theFault = new Fault();

theDetails.addElement (ex.toString());
theFault.setFaultCode ("42");
theFault.setFaultString ("internal error");
theFault.setDetailEntries (theDetails);

However, I can tell you that every company I have worked for forbade GPL, but have encouraged me to contribute to multiple projects using Apache, BSD and SCSL licensing. Actually, even a few LGPL.

Anecdotal and irrelevant.

If I go and collect the opinions of all the people on the JCP (whom all use different licenses) or just Java-using companies in general, the results would be just the opposite.

Obviously you didn't notice that the original column from which the author collected his data was posted on ZDNet, which is not exactly a pillar of the free software community. Even so, I say again that this was not an election. Evan Leibovitch did not set out to compare how many people prefered the GPL against how many didn't, nor did I bring the article to your attention to show that the GPL was winning some kind of popularity contest. He started by *noticing* that the GPL was winning the *money* contest and asked why.

Whether you admit it or not, the reality in the market place is full of evidence that the GPL does not in fact harm the free software community and in fact is probably helping to bring in companies that don't contribute to projects with less restrictive licenses. (That is not to say that companies that do contribute to non-GPL licensed free software are not contributing to free software -- they are. Think of it as a two pronged approach.)

For something like the Grep utility, there is no difference if it is run from a GUI find-button; as I understand it.

Running an application and using as a library are different things and are affected by the GPL differently. Anyone, including Microsoft, can freely run a GPL licensed application. No, they cannot simply transform it into a library and incorporate the code for it into a proprietary software application. That is why we must distinguish between the use of GPL code as a part of a GPL application or as part of a library. I want my code to be usable in the first way but not the second. Maybe you have different goals for your code, and if so you should not use the GPL to cover it.

Everyone is afraid of Microsoft stealing their code and claiming it to be their own. I just don't honestly think any license will stop them, since they seem to break them all the time. Sure, they end up in never-ending lawsuits, but they still do it.

Microsoft is forced to comply with licenses they have violated and often to pay significant damages all the time. Nevertheless, (can you tell what's coming next?) you've missed the point. I don't want *any* company anywhere to incorporate my code into proprietary software. Even if the GPL somehow just didn't apply to Microsoft it would be solving most of the problem for me.

When contributing to the Apache Ant project, they insisted I not event look at GPL code.

I find that claim suspicious, so perhaps you would care to back it up with some facts. I notice that the Apache Ant task guidelines explicitly mention the incompatible nature of the license they use an the GPL. I see that checking that a task does not depend on GPL or LGPL code is listed as an important step before submission. That is all quite sensible. However I see no indication there that merely reading the GPL licensed source code with a similar purpose is enough to disqualify submissions. One would think such a requirement would be well documented to eliminate confusion.

I don't doubt that you have been given such instructions when working on propriretary products. That is how the proprietary software industry looks at these things. Such an attitude would be quite appropriate regarding most non-disclosure agreements covering proprietary software, but that doesn't mean this is a sensible policy for GPL covered code.

Even if I concede all this nonsense for the sake of argument, it would still fail to prove that the differences between the GPL and BSD-style licenses

What steps has linux put forth to make sure buffer overruns dont happen? I have seen programs that bost that they can detect and fix the error in code (Stackguard). Now, why hasnt GCC implemited this idea. It seems to me protecting it so the code cant buffer overflow AND the kernel cant would fix alot of problems.(Apache)(How to)

1. Javadoc isn't well suited to man-pages

2. Javadoc is NOT just simple text with occasional markup

3. Java doesn't have a strong culture of collaborative development communities which lead to good documentation

How does Perl templating mechanism to other templating implementation like Velocity? I would like to know what pro/cons has each one or others that /.ers may have used.

I don't know if you are talking about invoking scripts from Java, in which case you a lot of alternatives, from beanshell to jython (the python implentation in Java) and most of them could be run through BSF to have an uniform API.
DinamicJava on the other hand is an interpreter of a superset of Java.
I don't know what you find annoying: compiling and executing. That's the norm for most programs. Java programs are Just In Time Compiled but that is done transparently by the virtual machine and is faster than interpreted.

From the footprints of mobile cell phones in my Apache log files, I see that many people are using the WAP format of TuxMobil - Linux On Laptops, PDAs and Mobile Cell Phones. Also the i-mode format is used, too.

I tried to submit similar article on Jan 22 but it was not accepted. Evidently Microsoft responded to the complain and Apache is not blacklisted anymore. Below is my original one month old post. Sorry URL show proper results now and I did not saved the original search results.

A few days ago I noticed that every time I use Internet Explorer (i.e. MSN search) to look for apache related projects I never got a reference to apache.org websites.

Examples: jelly script , maven apache , cocoon framework .

*.apache.org sites never came up. I am not even talking about listing it as "featured web site". It never came up as the link at all!!! The best you would get is a reference to XML.com website discussing the technology but not to technology itself.

Even search for "apache web" got the reference www.apache.com as the featured site instead of www.apache.org Only "apache" got "apache.org" as the featured site at the second place after oil related Apache corporation. Yahoo and Google as you would expect did proper job.

"Constructor-based Programming" is approximately the same as Dependency Injection which is related to Inversion of Control which means if you program in Java, you should look at Apache Avalon, PicoContainer, and/or the Spring Framework. Enjoy!

Did you read the most recent ASF position on this? The matter is due to a misunderstanding how patents work under the ASL versus how they work under the GPL. The matter will probably not be completely resolved until there is a better understanding of software patents and/or a court case involving patents and these open source license.

One important point: GPL-compatibility was not the only "justification for the new license" by a long shot. That was one of many goals, but not the main point of the license.

So, there has been progress on this issue, but it's not as clear cut as you make it out.

Did you read the most recent ASF position on this? The matter is due to a misunderstanding how patents work under the ASL versus how they work under the GPL. The matter will probably not be completely resolved until there is a better understanding of software patents and/or a court case involving patents and these open source license.

One important point: GPL-compatibility was not the only "justification for the new license" by a long shot. That was one of many goals, but not the main point of the license.

So, there has been progress on this issue, but it's not as clear cut as you make it out.

Actually, this is VERY IMPORTANT! I think the big advantage(s) of "open sourcing" java will be seen when things such as the mess with the logging API's and the use of the assert keyword are avoided.

It is still a mystery to me why Sun developed their own logging API's when LOG4J was widely used and accepted.

Hopefully a more open approach to Java would help projects that are housed at Jakarta and SourceForge actually make it into the JDK instead of sticking us with inferior rewrites.

The logging API is just one example. Imagine if the JUNIT implementation of assert was used, and if SWT could be combined with Swing/AWT to create better/superior user interfaces. I think Java could grow in leaps and bounds with an open approach.

Another good example of this would be the JDOM project. How long has it sat in the JCP? While in the meantime Sun implemented their own INFERIOR XML libraries.

The JCP is too political, and needs to modified/done away with. Let the people decide the direction of JAVA!

Just my .02

--Ryan

Actually, this is VERY IMPORTANT! I think the big advantage(s) of "open sourcing" java will be seen when things such as the mess with the logging API's and the use of the assert keyword are avoided.

It is still a mystery to me why Sun developed their own logging API's when LOG4J was widely used and accepted.

Hopefully a more open approach to Java would help projects that are housed at Jakarta and SourceForge actually make it into the JDK instead of sticking us with inferior rewrites.

The logging API is just one example. Imagine if the JUNIT implementation of assert was used, and if SWT could be combined with Swing/AWT to create better/superior user interfaces. I think Java could grow in leaps and bounds with an open approach.

Another good example of this would be the JDOM project. How long has it sat in the JCP? While in the meantime Sun implemented their own INFERIOR XML libraries.

The JCP is too political, and needs to modified/done away with. Let the people decide the direction of JAVA!

Just my .02

--Ryan

Apache isn't distributed under the GPL. It's distributed under the Apache Software License (ASL).

Apache has it's own licence that is far less restrictive in what can be done with the code than the GPL, SCO can do what they like with any code from Apache.

See here: http://www.apache.org/licenses/

Things are tight fisted because Sun wants a solid, CONSISTANT platform. This was a MAJOR REASON for the lawsuit that they fought and WON against Microsoft and their VM implementation

And, open-source software would be inconsistent because.......?

Inconsistent, like Apache?

or, perhaps, MySQL?

I get it. You mean inconsistent like this, this, or this?

Oh, the above aren't languages, like php or perl?

Eh, wait a minute. These are all *successful* projects, that are consistent?

If Sun were to open Java sources, it would be trivial to introduce a license (EG: GPL) that would largely offset forking of the codebase. Their best bet would be to pull a "QT" - open the source as GPL, then sell commercial licenses.

IBM could do as you suggest. Then again, they have already written their own Java compiler (Jikes), at least one of their own JVMs, their own servlet container (Jakarta), etc...

I'd recommend looking at this page for more info on IBM + Java + OSS.

IBM has already written at least one high-quality JVM implementation which is not OSS because of contracts that IBM has with Sun. Of course, suggesting that IBM work on GCJ and Classpath has some merit in and of itself. But realize that IBM has sunk untold man-hours and dolars into developing its own JVM - resources that they now wish to contribute to the community at-large as OSS. I personally can't blame them if they didn't wish to spend a similar amount of resources on GCJ and Classpath when what they've got works.

Perhaps with this Open Letter IBM is looking for permission to open up the code. Perhaps they are looking to collaborate with Sun to create an even better project. Perhaps this is all just marketing/PR bs. Time will tell.

Dom

Before I rant, let me just shout out to the dudes doing that excellent work over at Jakarta. Jakarta, Indonesia may be rather hellish (at least it was last time I went there, in '97), but j00 guys are teh 5hizn17. Tomcat is everthing IIS wants to be when it grows up, though I haven't looked at the .Net version, so maybe it has been drinking milk.
Now: rant. It just blows me away how thoroghly the 'write once, run everywhere' ideology has been crushed by these competing GUI libraries.
As somebody who is relatively new to the scene, about to do a school project, I'd like to throw a loud WTF? to the java community.
While it's cool that everyone has room to express themselves in Open Source, keep in mind that your fragmentation, across the board, helps darn few outside the Monopolistic Satrap in Redmond. I have no guess as to which one is the optimal choice for the front end of my project. Probably just shag it all and do a straight web front end.
Next time you have an "I'll re-invent this wheel; I can make it rounder! A rational pi!" moment, contribute to an existing project instead.
Thankee.