FreeBSD Foundation Announces Java License for Free

nt2UNIX writes: "There is an article on Daily Daemon News that the FreeBSD Foundation has announced the inclusion of a FreeBSD native SUN Java SDK and RunTime Environment for the January 2002 release of FreeBSD 4.5 The whole announcement can be found here."

Comments

This is nice

[metlin]

Since Microsoft is slowly trying to push third party development applications away from it's platform (apparently to make way for .NET), this is a good sign.

I'm not a big fan of Java, but if there are enough number of viable platforms for development, I'm sure attention could be shifted from the Win* platform to other unices.

FreeBSD is a very stable and robust platform, but to what extent has it managed to penetrate the existing MS market? Apparently Linux seems to be doing this, and the reason is not anything else, except support for existing applications.

I'd like to see where this takes the FreeBSD marketshare.

Re:Java license for Free (as in ???)

[Derkec]

And the FreeBSD team had to pay $3k in legal fees to lawyers to wrangle licensing terms, so it is hardly free as in beer.

Um.. Nobody held a gun to their head and made them hire lawyers. Sun, who built and owns the IP, graciously let them use it Free as in Beer. While I know everyone who codes should give away all their source out of the kindness of their hearts, the for slimy corportate types the folks at Sun are being pretty decent towards a group improving a competing Unix OS.

Re:Too bad the licensing blew it

[Metrol]

Hence, we discussed the matter with Sun and (IMHO) compromised our principles (unrestricted distribution in source and binary forms) in order to get the project done.

Certainly a fully open and free version of Java would have been preferrable and all. Even still, is this really that much different then having the Netscape 4.x browser included? For years this has gone along with both Linux and FreeBSD to provide what the community couldn't, a functioning browser.

Just because Netscape provided a browser didn't mean that work wasn't done to produce a more open product. The folks over at KDE stepped up to the plate and knocked one outta the park with Konqueror. And of course we now have Mozilla going pretty nicely. Two great apps displacing the closed source version that preceded it.

All I'm getting at here is that Sun need not displace any and all efforts that might look to go into a JVM for FreeBSD. Maybe it fills the role needed for a couple of years until interest in doing a fresh version as you described gets enough going to actually make it happen.

Re:Hm... don't know.

[markj02]

C# is an IEEE standard as well as the CLR. When mono is successful no one is going to want to use your proprietary JVM anymore.

Well, first of all, AFAIK, C# is an ECMA standard, not IEEE. Now, I don't get your complaint. You say that there is a problem with Sun "dumping proprietary libraries" into the Java spec. But the Java language, JVM, and core libraries are as-well specified as C#/CLR, and they are stable. Beyond the core ECMA specs, Microsoft is completely proprietary, with NO free implementation at all and NO decent specs. And there is no guarantee that Microsoft will even stick to their spec--they will likely extend the hell out of what they submitted as a standard. Sun at least writes pretty good specs for what goes into new releases of the Java platform and they give you a free implementation.

When mono is successful no one is going to want to use your proprietary JVM anymore.

Why would anybody care about Mono? It's going to use non-standard APIs on a little-used platform.

2. *WIN* Open Source license the JVM. Yes... I know it is scarry but this is you ONLY choice. Java still has a lot of great momentum. (*cough* Jakarta *cough*)

That makes no sense either. Why do you care about open sourcing Sun's JDK? Implementing C#/CLR as part of Mono is at least as hard as implementing Java/JVM. Yet, you seem convinced that Mono will be successful. Well, if the Mono people can hack up C#/CLR, why does it matter whether Sun open sources Java/JVM? Why can't someone else just implement a high-performance Java/JVM? And what has Microsoft done for the open source community later? Ever?

Sun makes available a great implementation under usable license terms. If you want something open source, rather than whining and stomping your foot that they aren't giving you more, go implement your own. Sun has already given you more than Microsoft likely ever will.

And, in fact, the equivalent of C#/CLR/CLI already exists for Java in open source form in the form of several open source Java compilers, the Intel ORP, and open source libraries. If that functionality is what you or the Mono project are after, you could have had that years ago.

Re:This is huge

[m_ilya]

Now if only the same thing would happen with OpenBSD -- we could write tomcat based web apps, and wouldn't have to worry so much about being hacked.

OpenBSD is not a silver bullet. It just comes with more sane defaults and its core have seen more audits probably. It doesn't magically protect applications your wrote and it doesn't protect applications installed from ports from hacks. Your code still have to be audited for bugs and your admin still have to patch installed applications if they show up on bugtraq.