Slashdot Mirror

Q: Are you open sourcing the Java language or the Java SE platform specifications?
A: We are not open sourcing the Java programming language, nor the platform APIs and specifications, which are governed by the JCP. We're open sourcing Sun's implementations of the Java SE and Java ME specifications. - FAQ

Well, in Sun v Microsoft, the incompatibility issues that Sun proved in court were ruled to violate an independent term of the license agreement made between the two parties. (Microsoft made their Java incompatible with real Java, which violated the terms of their agreement.) Thus, the court said that while Microsoft had violated their agreement, it didn't mean that they violated copyright law.

In at least some OSS licenses, a license for distribution of the software is granted only as long as the express limitations of the license agreement are followed. If you violate the terms of the agreement, you expressly invalidate the license that permits you to distribute the software. If you then distribute it anyway, you are violating copyright law. As you say, it really depends on what this particular license says in this case, though if it were the GPL, it would probably be ironclad enough to withstand the issue that came up in Sun v Microsoft.

Finally found the answer:

http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/faq.js p#h1

But these days, sun servers are just Opteron boxes, no?

No.

Real Businesses (hint: ones that handle lots of money) usually don't use Opteron boxes for mission-critical applications. They use Really Expensive Sun Sparc boxes, and they will be doing so for quite some time.

The Free Software Foundation has made no announcements on either of these developments.

The FSF statement will come on Monday in the official Sun press conference.

We were given a gift, so let's not whine for a while.

You're right, of course, and I'm not whining at all, simply noting the details of the license choice. And I just found this bit from Sun's Jonathan Schwartz blog:

And yes, we picked GPL version 2 - version 3 isn't available, but we like where the FSF is headed.

Emphasis mine. So apparently Sun likes the proposed GNU GPLv3!

Can anyone tell me what this means:
"quote"
Open-Source Java SE: Today Sun is releasing the source code for the Java HotSpot virtual machine, the Java programming language compiler (javac), and JavaHelp online help software. Release of a fully buildable Java SE Development Kit (JDK) based nearly entirely on open-source code is expected in the first half of 2007. "quote end"
From http://www.sun.com/2006-1113/feature/story.jsp

"based nearly entirely on open-source code is expected in the first half of 2007" what do they mean?

Is there still closed source code or non-free code when you try to build the VM of Sun or the compilers?

Or are we talking about the logos, pictures and a like just like in the "Firefox"-saga?

But the game is not over yet. That's because Microsoft may not be holding the cards that some think it's holding. At least not all of them. One need only look back at Sun's 2004 stand-still agreement with Microsoft to realize that when it comes to .Net-like virtual machine environements, the real IP holder is probably Sun. I'm not a lawyer. But I'm willing to be that there's hardly anything - probably nothing - in .Net for which prior art doesn't exist in Sun's Java or something that came before it. In fact, looking across Sun's entire portfolio of IP as well as the larger world of older intellectual property, it's quite possible that some of the other software that's often packaged with Linux that could potentially be infringing on Microsoft's IP (i.e. OpenOffice, SAMBA, and Evolution) is actually doing nothing of the sort.

So, the two agreements are only similar if you take them out of contexts (like you did) - otherwise, there are huge differences on many levels (who is affected - the community level, the pretext to the agreement - litigation against microsoft in the EU and in the US, etc.) And the situation is this:

• Mono: may or may not have technology that is covered by MS patents
• Java: 100% has technology that is covered by SUN's patents (which is fine) - but very unlikely (I never say anything for 100% except gravity, but as unlikely as 99.99%) that MS has patents concerning it. Even if it has, SUN, distributor of java has enough patents covering MS stuff to effectively defend itself. Can you make the same claim of Mono? Mono currently only has a covenant (that is revocable) that only protects customers of Novell.

It's great that they've GPL'd it, but it's a pity that, if you want your code to make it into Sun's Java, you have to give Sun the right to make your code proprietary:

Sun requires that contributors to all of its Free and open-source projects sign the Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA). . .to ensure that Sun has the rights to use your contributions in products and projects."

It makes a community fork almost inevitable, IMHO - too many people won't want to see their code turned into something Microsoft can license and use without any GPL worries.

There will be a "Java Open Source event" webcast live at 9:30 am PST: http://www.sun.com/2006-1113/feature/index.jsp

Enter Sun's open source Java decision. Novell's Mono project -- essentially a Linux-based clone of Microsoft's .Net -- was apparently a major focus of the deal. For several years now, dating back to the days before Ximian was under Novell's wing, the open source sector has been wondering if Microsoft was going to drop a shoe on Ximian-founder Miguel de Icaza's brainchild (Mono). .Net has always been a bet-the-company gamble for Microsoft. Today, the company is taking heat on every single front and it can't afford a complete cave-in on one of its most important properties. There's no way it could let a .Net clone get away with murder. Sooner or later, this was going to come to a head. Well, now it has.

But the game is not over yet. That's because Microsoft may not be holding the cards that some think it's holding. At least not all of them. One need only look back at Sun's 2004 stand-still agreement with Microsoft to realize that when it comes to .Net-like virtual machine environements, the real IP holder is probably Sun. I'm not a lawyer. But I'm willing to be that there's hardly anything - probably nothing - in .Net for which prior art doesn't exist in Sun's Java or something that came before it. In fact, looking across Sun's entire portfolio of IP as well as the larger world of older intellectual property, it's quite possible that some of the other software that's often packaged with Linux that could potentially be infringing on Microsoft's IP (i.e. OpenOffice, SAMBA, and Evolution) is actually doing nothing of the sort.

That answers your questions better than I could - but I recommend reading the entire blog post, it is rather interesting.

Just to make it clear: Java is going to have the GPL with the Classpath-exception, which explicitely allows to create closed source applications when using the standard libraries.

See Gosling's blog:
http://blogs.sun.com/jag/

and here you'll find the mentioned exception:
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html

Yes, there's actually an interview with James Gosling that mentions the issue with Microsoft. Refer to Q&A pairs #2 and #3.

So am I going to be able to get the sources from somewhere and build Java from scratch?

How is this going to work?

I have quoted two soundbites on my blog from videos that will be shown at the announcement tomorrow (the quotes are from the information that was (I believe) given to the press.

"I think Sun has well, with this contribution have contributed more than any other company to the free software community in the form of software. It shows leadership. It's an example I hope others will follow." RMS

"Sun's policy of GPLing java which we are celebrating now is an extraordinary achievement in returning programming technology to that state of freely available knowledge that people can share and improve together. It's a crucial step in the process of turning the technology today into knowledge that people can use freely to make the technology of tomorrow." Eben Moglin

I've seen the video shorts (well some of them) that will be shown at the announcement. I think some folks will be surprised. RMS also makes reference to the java trap.

Tp.

I wonder how some websites and newssites claim to know the truth even before Sun's Official statement in this matter ? Perhaps they work different on different timezones but for me as well as a few friends in the states the cat (or Duke) isn't out of the bag yet.

Personally I'm very sceptical by all this. Especially since the whole project was already open sourced in some way (meaning: the sourcecode has always been freely available) and it was only due to some fanatics (IMO) that the need is deemed more important than it might actually be. Still, if I put on my hat of sceptism +10 then I have to wonder... Is this done to please the OSS fanatics or perhaps to cut down on development costs on Java itself?

Some more articles I have found, with some substance to them:
InfoQ, also mentions Glassfish.
eWeek.

There is also going to be a official webcast about this by Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green 9.30 a.m. PT.

In related news, apparently Project Looking Glass, the 3d desktop, is likely to be included in the Ubuntu Feisty release.

Some more articles I have found, with some substance to them:
InfoQ, also mentions Glassfish.
eWeek.

There is also going to be a official webcast about this by Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green 9.30 a.m. PT.

In related news, apparently Project Looking Glass, the 3d desktop, is likely to be included in the Ubuntu Feisty release.

It's an extension shared by *BSD and GNU find and xargs. Solaris is an example of a system that doesn't support -print0, and (like *BSD and GNU) does support -exec {} +, or at least that's what its docs say.

I want to be able to develop applications in both Windows and Linux.

Haven't you heard of Java and Netbeans?

Java (much like Flash) is being horribly misused. It is not meant for every other fancy visual GUI application and, hopefully, it never will be.

It lacks support of DLLs (or other such libraries)

the chances of seeing a Java application whose GUI actually blends in the slightest with the OS upon which it runs are slim to none

and of course: it is slow

I could go on about how JRE annoys the heck out of me; For example, I couldn't properly uninstall an old version of Eclipse because it wanted an extremely old version of JRE (?!!).

For text-based cataloguing stuff, simple little GUIs and extremely cross-platform software, Java is truly a wonderful thing. I'm not saying it's bad; I'm just saying it's misused.

Just use Netbeans which can use VB 6 and build java apps.

Links:

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?threa d_id=40344

http://blogs.sun.com/herbertc/entry/project_sempli ce_visual_basic_for

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/herbertc?entry=pr oject_semplice_visual_basic_for

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2006/05/19/write-ja va-web-apps-in-visual-basic-or-javascript/

http://vbwire.com/brief.asp?9342

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=107

Just use Netbeans which can use VB 6 and build java apps.

Links:

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?threa d_id=40344

http://blogs.sun.com/herbertc/entry/project_sempli ce_visual_basic_for

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/herbertc?entry=pr oject_semplice_visual_basic_for

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2006/05/19/write-ja va-web-apps-in-visual-basic-or-javascript/

http://vbwire.com/brief.asp?9342

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=107

I would hate to be the first one to say "try *nix" instead of Microsnot, but... I have seen Sun-Ray employed in a retail environment using ID cards, and was very impressed. The staff walk up to any terminal, insert the smart card, and instantly have their (previously disconnected, but still live) session re-established. As soon as they removed their cards, the session was disconected pending resumption at any other terminal. No login, no restarting applications, etc. It was beautiful. On the downside, it does take bandwidth, and you may need to use a Sun server, which your app may not support. OTOH the may now support Terminal Services. Start here; HTH: http://www.sun.com/software/index.jsp?cat=Desktop& tab=3&subcat=Sun%20Ray%20Clients

Although the article specifically states that this is a windows solution, I think it's worth noting that sunray works exactly like this. You put the smartcard, your previous desktop session is instantly restored, you do what you want to do, you pull out the card. Your desktop session is preserved and is terminal independent.

As for the lack of windows applications, it is actually possible to do it even on sunrays , although admitedly it is not particularly suitable for the small scale that the article submitter implies.

Anyway, you might take a look at those two links, and if you must absolutely use PCs (sunrays are more suitable for the job the article is outlining), take a look at citrix also. I don't know whether they do smartcards though.

Although the article specifically states that this is a windows solution, I think it's worth noting that sunray works exactly like this. You put the smartcard, your previous desktop session is instantly restored, you do what you want to do, you pull out the card. Your desktop session is preserved and is terminal independent.

As for the lack of windows applications, it is actually possible to do it even on sunrays , although admitedly it is not particularly suitable for the small scale that the article submitter implies.

Anyway, you might take a look at those two links, and if you must absolutely use PCs (sunrays are more suitable for the job the article is outlining), take a look at citrix also. I don't know whether they do smartcards though.

In >20 years how many times has Dvorak actually been right?

Also, last I checked, there is already proprietary software for Linux already and GPL hasn't stopped them due to any viral "tainting."

(Yeah I know one of those is going GPL soon but isn't yet)

Then there are those which skirt the GPL and where the legality is questionable, such as NVidia's and ATI's video drivers.

That article summarizes the correct way to end a thread's life and also contains a link to Sun's tutorial on thread lifecycles.

Was that so hard?

That article summarizes the correct way to end a thread's life and also contains a link to Sun's tutorial on thread lifecycles.

Was that so hard?

That article summarizes the correct way to end a thread's life and also contains a link to Sun's tutorial on thread lifecycles.

Was that so hard?

On the Sun's Java website there is an interview with James Gosling. A bit of an interesting read.

The fifth paragraph reads, "Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun declined to comment on its open-source Java plans and licensing choice" That doesn't sound like a definitive answer to me. The ONLY thing that is actually said is, "...using a GPL license is very much *on* the table..." (q.v. http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/busy_week1 ). This does *not* commit sun to *anything*.

There's RTSJ and a special version of Java, but they're brand new this year.
http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/realtime.j sp

Real time Java also requires a dual UltraSPARC system running Solaris, which is a bit impractical for a Space Shuttle, and it certainly won't run on a gumstix or other embedded platform as was suggested.

And regular/embedded Java remains definitely unsuitable for real time.

Java has had support for the new Daylight Saving changes since 1.4.2_11.

Java has had support for the new Daylight Saving changes since 1.4.2_11.

My opinion is that they are probably on a level close to Sun and its multi-million dollar R&D in pumping out Unix inovations.

Look I completely agree that one has to start with realistic things. RSS and atom are very simple, and good at what they do: really they just offer very simple file system metadata: see What Atom is all about.

Semantic Web services are a lot more complex. But at least they are RESTful. Now if a large percentage of the population finds its difficult to close xml tags, then they won't be using either atom or anything else. But that does not mean that there are not some very cool things to do in the mashup area.

Oracle is building Semantic Web technology into its database and open source mappers are appearing a little all over the place. See D2RQ as a good example, or Open Link Virtuoso. It's easy to create a mapping, I wrote mine and set up a server in one week.

Concerning ontologies versus tagging, there is no either/or here. It is simple to create a relationship for tagging. Here goes

http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish :tag "semantic", "cool", "blog" .

I have tagged my blog with three tags.

To get back to Tim Berner's Lee's remarks: my thought here is the following:

I think I am getting what this is about: standardise the interpretation of tagsoup.

If every browser interpreted tagsoup identically then one could think of tagsoup as a form of xhmtl. Tagsoup pages would be displayed identically across browsers, and one could work with the resulting xhtml DOM tree.

One major advantage of producing your site in clean xhtml would then simply be that the rendering of a clean xhtml page would be a lot faster, as it would not have to go through the extra translation to xhtml. It would of course be easier to maintain too, as the structure of xhtml would be clearer than whatever weird tagsoup rules end up being decided as the standard ones.

SOAP is not! the semantic web! If you don't know that, then I suggest you turn the lights on before you eat stuff lying around you. You may have been in the toilets when you tried to eat that cake ;-) . Don't want to think what you put in your mouth.

RDF is more RESTful than plain xml in many ways, since the terms in the language are URLS and so you can get their meaning. It is also very compatible with Atom. I am on the Atom Protocol list and my name is on the Atom Spec. So I know the debate well. I have a small AtomOwl ontology with XQuery transform, so you can transform andy atom document into XML. (ouch! xml. Damn people here find that too difficult! Are the people here your friends?)

Think of RDF as databases + URIs. Take a plain old vanilla mysql database, add a RDF mapping, and you can query it with sparql. I know, I have done this for the Roller Blog database. (you know, the database that publishes atom feeds)

SOAP is not! the semantic web! If you don't know that, then I suggest you turn the lights on before you eat stuff lying around you. You may have been in the toilets when you tried to eat that cake ;-) . Don't want to think what you put in your mouth.

RDF is more RESTful than plain xml in many ways, since the terms in the language are URLS and so you can get their meaning. It is also very compatible with Atom. I am on the Atom Protocol list and my name is on the Atom Spec. So I know the debate well. I have a small AtomOwl ontology with XQuery transform, so you can transform andy atom document into XML. (ouch! xml. Damn people here find that too difficult! Are the people here your friends?)

Think of RDF as databases + URIs. Take a plain old vanilla mysql database, add a RDF mapping, and you can query it with sparql. I know, I have done this for the Roller Blog database. (you know, the database that publishes atom feeds)

"5 minutes? What the hell are you running? Have you used a Java program since 1998?"
Properly written Java apps are not slow, though if they use Swing they look hideous.

Properly written Swing apps look great. Guess you haven't seen one since 1998!

The problem with open source today as I see it is seperation. Many people share many different ideas and believes and if there isn't an entity which can lead it all into good paths you're in for chaos. Sometimes this doesn't have to be bad perse but it can be annoying.

As you can see today with many package maintainers who's only link with the software they're maintaining is that they like it. Only 2 weeks ago did I try to utilize FreeBSD and its ports. I already installed MySQL 4.x and then wanted dspam. No go.. It demanded I used MySQL 5.x. A perfect example IMO, the package maintainer asks...

And that is why I don't like the idea of Java going open source. Still, despite all that I truly hope it might turn out to be a GCJ killer. Why? If there is one thing turning off Linux people from Java it has got to be gcj.. How frustrating can it be when you're trying example code and only come to the conclusion that it simply doesn't work? You typed everything as it should, you studied the code yourself but yet it does. not. work. Well, enter gcj hell. If you're going over the Java tutorials you'll be sure to run into some beginner examples which will not run when using gcj.

In fact, many of the usenet and irc groups I'm on start asking people if they're using gcj when experiencing problems on Linux. If so then the advice is: ditch that POS and get the JVM from Sun. Strangely enough this fixes the problem in most of the cases. So yes, I don't like the idea of Java going open source but I'd be very pleased if this stopped the gcj idiocy and got distributions to ship with the official and working Java Virtual Machine. The one from Sun ofcourse...

In case you forgot, Sun sued Microsoft to stop them from diverging (further) from the standard.

The end result was Microsoft creating .NET to compete with Java.

But if Sun Java is released under the GPL, I expect to see several more versions of Java, most of them incompatible with each other, coming out soon. Iceweasel, anyone?

This is why open computing is not based only on the available of open source. Another key element of open computing is open standards. Java has open standards; you can go download the Java Language Specification and check if any given implementation conforms to it or not. You can also go download the Java Virtual Machine Specification and see if some compiler is producing correct bytecode or if some JVM is running the bytecode correctly.

Yes, it's possible someone may fork an implementation of one or the other (the compiler or the JVM) and make incompatible changes. That would be fairly silly, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. One expects that Sun will allow them to have the source code but will not grant them the right to say it is a conforming implementation of Java if it's not. I assume that is what you're getting at with the comparison to Iceweasel.

The thing is, this has always been possible. There are open source Java compilers and open source JVMs as well. The thing Sun is doing is making it easier, because they are (apparently) open sourcing their JVM, which creates more opportunity and more interest in doing something with that particular implementation.

But if Sun Java is released under the GPL, I expect to see several more versions of Java, most of them incompatible with each other, coming out soon. Iceweasel, anyone?

This is why open computing is not based only on the available of open source. Another key element of open computing is open standards. Java has open standards; you can go download the Java Language Specification and check if any given implementation conforms to it or not. You can also go download the Java Virtual Machine Specification and see if some compiler is producing correct bytecode or if some JVM is running the bytecode correctly.

Yes, it's possible someone may fork an implementation of one or the other (the compiler or the JVM) and make incompatible changes. That would be fairly silly, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. One expects that Sun will allow them to have the source code but will not grant them the right to say it is a conforming implementation of Java if it's not. I assume that is what you're getting at with the comparison to Iceweasel.

The thing is, this has always been possible. There are open source Java compilers and open source JVMs as well. The thing Sun is doing is making it easier, because they are (apparently) open sourcing their JVM, which creates more opportunity and more interest in doing something with that particular implementation.

GCJ is now bringing a lot more to the table than just cloning the Sun stuff.
You have got to be kidding me! GCJ is about the biggest Java turnoff for newbies there is. I've been starting with Java somewhere last year and I'm very enthousiastic about it since I really dig the language and the things it provides. What I don't like (I hate it with a passion) is that horrible OSS POS excuse for the real thing.

Tough words, I know. Just goto the Java tutorial and start learning. Eventually you'll come across several examples which do not work. Not even now at this very moment. When I started out those same examples didn't work and I was wondering what the heck was wrong. Surely not the examples themselves.. Only thanks to my Solaris box (or better put: Other Java environment) did I found out that it was gcj which was to blame. Yeah, great environment when it can't even fulfill basic tutorial examples.

Another thing.. I have spend a lot of time on Java usenet groups and Java IRC channels. And guess what? The first thing we ask people when they have problems using Java on Linux is: "What jvm are you using? Are you using gcj by any chance? Please run "java -version"" and when the outcome is gcj we tell them to ditch the piece of shit and get the official JVM from Sun. And yes; in 8 out of 10 cases (very broad yet educated guess) the problems are solved.

So please... give me a break and don't come with this nonsense. gcj isn't Java compatible, has never been Java compatible and most definatly can't keep up with the current pase one single bit.

I really do not look forward to Sun opening up Java since I already saw what might happen when looking at GCJ. The only thing I do hope is that Linux distributors will now finally ship the official JRE with the several environments so that beginning Java enthousiasts won't have to be turned down by official example code not working on their environments.

Let's not forget that the Java on cellphones, J2ME, is a small subset of J2SE or J2EE. The interpreter may not speed up too much J2SE code. J2ME API's (maybe VM?) seem to be open source already based on a quick google search: http://www.sun.com/software/communitysource/j2me/ atleast the MIDP/CLDC/CDC parts.

It would be interesting to know exactly how the chipmakers went about implementing the interpreters in hardware and/or firmware.

Many are available, however, not in paper format. For 2 examples try the J2SE Documentation and the PHP documentation, which comes with user annotated . What you'll also find is that a lot of publishers just put out printouts of the API docs. You can get a 1000 page book on programming in Java, but 700 pages of that will be the API. That's a big waste of paper, especially since the API docs are out of date the moment the new version is release. I think that a good 3rd party programming manual shouldn't contain anything about the API, but other stuff that isn't typically discussed, such as weird pitfalls, and unexpected functionalities in the language.

And curiously, http://www.sun.com/favicon.ico just says "Sun" instead of their logo.

Sun

I've heard that Sun considered 64-bit machines servers only, and so they don't have a plugin or Java webstart for it yet. There is a bug report about it, which has been open for ages, and is among the top 25 RFEs in their database. Hopefully they'll do something about it soon. I'm missing webstart.