Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Apache/Sun Relationship Worsens

Posted by Hemos on from the gotta-loosen-your-grip-on-java dept.

d6y writes "Over on the O'Reilly weblogs there's an entry on the relationship between Sun's Java Community Process and Apache. Sun have been rubbing people up with wrong way (the problems of licensing open source J2EE containers; stuts v. JavaFaces; log4j v. JDK 1.4 logging....) and I hope this gets sorted out real soon. See also the original VNUNet article and Apache's position paper."

11 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Apache/Sun by Orville · · Score: 5, Informative
    A couple of thoughts:


    While it does matter in the aesthetic that Sun is restricting certification of open-source J2EE platforms, fortunately Sun has not taken drastic positions of 'shutting down' JBoss or anything like that. This letter from Marc Fleury seems to clarify the exact issue with JBoss.


    This seeming 'rivalry' between Sun & Apache is not as clear-cut; Many of the Jakarta contributors are Sun employees and engineers. (Tomcat/Catalina is used as the 'reference implementation' for the Servlet/JSP specifications.) For more on this, check out the former 'open source guy' at Sun: James Duncan Davidson

    1. Re:Apache/Sun by acroyear · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes, many Jakarta contributors are from Sun, particularly with regard to Tomcat/Catalina. But many are not.

      Outside of Tomcat, IBM has been the biggest commercial vendor contributing to Apache, including core items Xerces, SOAP, and Log4J, and in each case Sun has refused to let Apache be the de facto standard (inspite of that being what i believe most java developers want), and has instead put out alternative APIs which its embedded with the JDK, thus locking everybody w/ 1.4 down to a standard that now has little room to grow.

      And in some cases the 1.4 bundled version is inferior to the Apache effort (yes, Crimson was/is better than Xerces 1.x because of IBM's redundant i18n overhead, but its NOT better than 2.0; and jdk1.4 logging is definitely not nearly as good as log4j).

      But as M$ has shown, people will stick with whats bundled, even if inferior, 'cause "its just easier that way"...

      ...& all java developers will suffer.

      Also, yes Tomcat is the "reference implementation" and all that, but that's because Sun has also released the code for watchdog, which is the standards-compliance testing tool for Servlets. What Apache and O'Reilly want to see is a similar effort to release the standards-compliance tests for other J2EE software specifications like EJB, and they consider it hypocritical for Sun to hold onto those tests in exchange for as much money as they charge for them.

      --
      "But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
      -- Joe
    2. Re:Apache/Sun by mark_lybarger · · Score: 3, Informative

      most certainly, and that goes for any platform/tool/whatever. every project of considerable size should have a compent senior engineer on staff to guide these types of things.

  2. This has been around for a while now... by mmcshane · · Score: 5, Informative

    here's a thread (J2EE considered harmful) on the jakarta-general list that precipitated the Apache statement.

  3. Text:http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/ by Commienst · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oreilly Weblog is real slow. This text does not include picture of the nerd who wrote the article, which is a good thing.
    -Commienst

    "Apache on warpath over Java license"

    by Steve Anglin
    Feb. 20, 2002

    According to vnunet.com, "The Apache Software Foundation's battle with Sun Microsystems stepped up gear
    last week as the open source community struggled to loosen Sun's cast iron grip on the Java platform." This is in response to, first, Lutris being turned-down for J2EE certification, and then JBoss, which is J2EE compliant from a technical standpoint, but apparently not J2EE compliant enough for Sun certification.

    Last week, ONJava.com published O'Reilly editor Mike Loukides' follow-up on the possibility of open source J2EE from Sun: Will You See Open Source J2EE Implementations? Not Likely. TheServerSide.com also published an interview with one of Sun's J2EE principles, Karen Tegan. While Sun essentially says it supports open source efforts, it does not want those efforts to impact the J2EE certification process, a process that clearly is closed source at best. See the conflict.

    As a high ranking member in the Java Community Process (JCP), Apache is part of the JSPA (Java Specification Participation Agreement). In this capacity, Apache can actively propose new and revised Java API specifications as well as integrate a particular specification under Jakarta, Apache's open source Java projects. Apache's reply is here in Apache's JSPA Position. According to Apache, "...Sun doesn't give a hoot about whether J2EE licensing restricts open source J2EE products (in case you missed it, it does)."

    Sun benefits from its relationship with Apache. Apache gives Sun "...an advertising statement...to claim that it (Sun) has a 'vision which uses open standards and non-proprietary interfaces'." If Apache's reply and suggestions go unanswered, Apache can put pressure on Sun in other, more severe ways. Without Apache, Sun could lose many of its Java developers as Jakarta projects would be affected. The impact could be quite severe, certainly in terms of publicity. Financially, who knows?

    Steve Anglin is Managing Editor of ONJava.com and O'Reilly Network's .NET DevCenter for O'Reilly & Associates' Online Publishing Group (OPG).

    --

    I am into the copy and paste.
  4. Re:The Sun/OSS relationship by acroyear · · Score: 5, Informative

    The irony being that in their early days, when SunOS was only a minor-varient away from being pure BSD (thanks, B.Joy), they WERE actually giving away the OS and its features (like NFS), hoping on always being ahead of the competitors in speed to encourage the hardware sales that kept the company on top during the late 80s to mid-90s.

    Things were slowly changing by 1991 with SunOS 4, then with 5/2 they had to definitely switch to a "buy it only" since they themselves paid so much for getting SystemV in the first place...

    of course, just about every single one of us Sun users at the time were furious with the switch...Sun boxes to me are still crippled in speed because of SystemV's overhead compared to BSD, and the speed of BSD x86 boxes over SCO & other SystemV-based x86 releases just rubs our noses in it even more...

    --
    "But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
    -- Joe
  5. Re:This is most typical of Sun by Westley · · Score: 3, Informative
    2. They "adopted" the free and entirely non-sun code base for Java Servlets (Jakarta) and claimed it was the "Sun Reference Platform"

    I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. I believe what happened was that back in the days of servlet 2.0, there was the JSDK and there was Apache JServ. Sun decided to donate their JSDK source to Apache and continued working on it as part of Tomcat.

    Tomcat is now the reference servlet/JSP implementation. I don't think I've ever seen Sun claim it is "theirs". Can you give a reference?

    Jon

  6. Re:This is most typical of Slashdot by ChaseTec · · Score: 5, Informative

    >> 2. They "adopted" the free and entirely non-sun code base for Java Servlets (Jakarta) and claimed it was the "Sun Reference Platform"

    Yeah, they never did anything for Tomcat did they? (sarcasm) A few of the developers for Tomcat were Sun employees until recently. Did you bother to check any of your other rants?

    --
    My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
  7. Re:Really Odd... by bsletten · · Score: 3, Informative
    While clearly well-designed and offering a great feature set due to its JMX bus architecture, I'm curious how you come to the conclusion that JBoss is the best J2EE webcontainer out there.

    Certainly not for performance or documentation criteria...

    What then? Bang for buck?

    I'm excited about its future, I just don't seeing it being adopted in production environments yet which clearly indicates skepticism toward your claim.

  8. Sun loves JBoss by skelf · · Score: 3, Informative

    Marc Fleury of JBoss (at an informal session in Boston last month) said that he is in constant contact with developers and management at Sun, and that Sun secretly loves JBoss, because grass-roots projects like that are just what Sun needs in their fight against M$.

    I also remember him actually defending Sun's charging so much for J2EE certification, but I can't remember what his reasoning was.

  9. Re:Wake up, Sun! by pmz · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sun's problem is that they want to be a big monopoly like Microsoft...

    I really don't think so.

    1) Scott McNealy has said so.

    2) Sun uses many open standards in its treasured hardware business (SPARC, SBus, PCI, etc.) and its software business (UNIX, POSIX, etc.).

    In general, Sun tries to compete on its implementation of standards with value-added things, such as excellent hardware features and reliability, support services, etc.

    --
    Healthcare article at Kuro5hin