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

WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

The FreeBSD Foundation relies solely on contributions from individuals and businesses to fund its activities. In negotiating the JDK/JRE license, where both parties were in almost immediate agreement to the license terms, the Foundation still spent in excess of $3000 on legal fees. Highly qualified and experienced legal counsel is the expensive yet necessary cost of protecting the best interests of the FreeBSD Project.

Too bad the licensing blew it

[freebsd guy]

As a former FreeBSD committer, I worked extensively with the team that produced the JRE/JDK project. Since programming languages can only be protected by patents (not copyrights), our original intention was to craft a clean-room version of Java that we could release under the BSD license, just like everything else in our distribution. Unfortunately, manpower was tight, and we were not able to do it all on our own. 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.

Our experience should serve as an important lesson to open source developers who try to tackle too large a project by themselves: do not sell your soul to Corporate America. Sure, we have a native JRE/JDK, but the only advantage is that it is native - not Free in any stretch of the imagination. (Not even restricted-Free, e.g. GPL).

All that aside, I have been testing several snapshots of the Java tools and they are very responsive and stable. More so, I am afraid, than Blackdown - although the ultimate test will be to see how it compares with the JRE running on a Solaris/SPARC machine.

freebsd guy

This is huge

[astrashe]

I love it -- the lack of solid java support is the biggest problem I have with FreeBSD.

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.

c'mon, all the cool kids are doing it.

[footility]

I'm sending $10 to the foundation. 299 more of
the same donation, and they'll have the lawyers
paid. Come on, it's only $10 bucks -- just skip
that ${quantity_of_cold_beverage} next weekend ;-)

If you can afford more... The foundation /is/ a
501(c)(3) non-profit, so you could get a bit of
a tax credit on your donation if it is postmarked
before 31 Dec 2001.

for full details see: http://freebsdfoundation.org/

Hm... don't know.

[burtonator]

I am a big fan of Java. I think my accomplishments speak for themselves. I have done a lot of work under Jakarta and founded two of its core projects.

That said. I am very upset at what SUN has done to systematically *destroy* Java's potential.

In 1995 everything was great, Java was going to change the world.

Then they decided to play games, they pulled out of the standards committees and now there will be no ECMA or IEEE standard for Java.

Not only that but they have shown that they have NO interest in EVER Open Sourcing Java.

Every new Java specification is dumped into the JVM as proprietary code.

I mean I can understand that Open Sourcing a large proprietary product like Java can be hard. Good examples are the Mozilla and Tomcat projects. Proptietary products can end up using libraries that you don't have the license too. Not only that but you have to get sign off from all the morons that think proprietary is the only way to go.

But SUN *continues* to dump code into the proprietary JVM making it bigger and more bloated than ever before.

In case Some of you don't know, SUNs MO for extending the VM is to work on a dedicated sub-project outside of the VM and then getting it targeted for the next revision.

So for example JSSE (Java Secure Socket Extension). This is a external library that can just be plugged into any VM. Instead of releasing this as an external project that has different licensing they just dump it into JDK 1.4 with the same old stupid non-OSS license.

THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO DO IT SUN!

I think it is great that FreeBSD can now distribute the JDK.

It just seems too little too late for me.

Java has real competition now. They are not the ONLY game on the block.

Python and C# are going to give you a REAL run for your money SUN.

So, they way I see it, you have two options:

1. Loose. 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.

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*)

Clearly you aren't interested in the standards process, this is fine. I can't blame you. Standards are not a panacea! Nice to have but not really a requirement.

So just BSD license it and be over with it. MS isn't going to steal it! They aren't interested in Java anymore.

What? Aren't going to Open Source Java?

Fine. I am just going to use C#.

Sorry if this seemed like a troll. I am just sick of these stupid games :(

I just want to change the world. Is that so bad :)

Re:Hm... don't know.

[informer]

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.

This is a good point, however going to the trouble of standardizing the various components of .NET implies a comitment to sticking with those standards.


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.

I agree that these are mostly advantages for Java however its not very likely that microsoft will break compatability with the spec as far as breaking applications that are complied for, and conform to it. To be fair, the microsoft .NET implementation has not even been released yet, but its clear that the ECMA documents are for the most part workable.

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

Little-used platform (.NET?)? This wont be true for much longer. It has not even been released yet and there is a significantly large community of developers already. People (in significant numbers) WILL care about Mono if it makes porting between windows and other OSes very easy. They will care even more if Mono implements most of Microsoft's "non standard" API's. Since when did Microsoft's non-standard API's ever stop WINE from at least trying to implement anything? I guess you're saying WINE is also useless, along with support for NTFS, SMB, etc etc. The list goes on.

Re:Hm... don't know.

[macpeep]

"But SUN *continues* to dump code into the proprietary JVM making it bigger and more bloated than ever before."

Not into the VM. Into the core API. There's a HUGE difference. Of course the two walk kinda hand in hand but that's like saying KDE and Gnome are in the Linux kernel.

"Java has real competition now. They are not the ONLY game on the block. Python and C# are going to give you a REAL run for your money SUN."

Umm, C# yes! Python, I don't think so!! Some other people would say Perl, but seriously, they are not in the same league if you talk about industry wide acceptance. C# and .NET will definitely give Java a run for their money though!

I don't see how being an IEEE standard has any direct correlation with success or failure of a language though. Visual Basic is not a standard of any kind and it's one of the most used programming languages / systems out there. Java is also hugely popular and is also not a standard. JavaScript hasn't become any more or less popular after ECMA made it a standard ("ECMA script"). Or if it's more used now, it's not because web designers would go "oh! it's an ECMA standard!". The list goes on with other technologies too.. Flash (as in web animations) for example.

"So, they way I see it, you have two options:"
[snip]
"2. *WIN* Open Source license the JVM. Yes... I know it is scarry but this is you ONLY choice."

Time to wake up! Java is doing just fine and even if Sun doesn't have a totally optimal strategy with it, you're living in la-la land if you seriously think that open source licensing the JVM is Sun's "only choice" (you even spelled only in all-caps!). The community process is working fine and Java is just getting wider adoption and acceptance every day. Most new cellular phones that are going to be released in Asia and Europe during 2002 and onwards will come with a JVM built in. More and more web servers and application servers run Java.

Open sourcing Mozilla did dick all for Netscape. Sure, it is going to produce a nice browser a year from now (five years down the road) when Mozilla completes, but as far as grabbing back market share and battling the competition, it has failed miserably. Check the logs of any major "neutral" web site and you'll see that Mozilla has completely marginal adoption. Neutral here means such sites where the main users aren't gear heads.

"Fine. I am just going to use C#."

I saw similar reactions when Microsoft came out with J++. People paniced, accused Sun of "destroying Java" and predicting that Java would be dead within a year, replaced by "Microsoft Java". This was around 1997 or 1998 or so.. Don't remember when exactly. Lots of people were talking about jumping ship. I guess it just goes to show that Sun and the Java developer community might have more of a clue than you think.