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Red Hat Plans Open Source Java

Posted by simoniker on from the jump-java-and-wail dept.

sthiyaga writes "According to a ComputerWire article, Red Hat is in discussions with Sun about launching an open source version of the Java platform. 'There's always been an interest in an open source implementation of Java developed in a clean room that adheres to the Java standards,' Szulik told ComputerWire. 'We're in discussions with Sun. We'd like to do this with their support.'"

20 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft learned a tough lesson by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    About making their own Java not built to standards and without Sun's support. It looks like RedHat learned it, too.

  2. Native Java by buckinm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Having a open-source version of Java should allow swing to be compiled via GCJ. There would no longer be anything holding natively compiled Java back.

    --
    This isn't any ordinary darkness. It's advanced darkness.
  3. Re:Much needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OK i keep seeing this .NET stuff and never ask about it cause obviosly so many know and i'm not in the know. And i admit i'm somewhat behind things sometimes, so obviosly i missed this somewhere. What is .NET exactly?

  4. eh, not likely by m750 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/dev elopment/java/story/0,10801,82286,00.html?nas=AM-8 2286 'Should Java be made fully open-source? The problem with open-source is that [victory] goes to volume, and that's evident in the Linux community today where ISVs [independent software vendors] are qualifying to Red Hat and abandoning everyone else. Why? Because Red Hat has volume. If Java were open-source, Microsoft could take it, deliver it as they saw fit and drive a definition of Java that was divergent from the one that the community wanted to be compatible. And to the victor would go the spoils of that nefarious action. '

    --
    www.underonesky.com
  5. sun should go for it by autopr0n · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It would be a win-win situation for them, and they can use their trademark to protect the 'purity'. I.E. if it's not "Pure java" it can't be called "Pure java". And microsoft seems to have gotten out of the java game anyway, so their corruption isn't much of an issue. I doubt the open source maintainers would allow contributions that would violate sun's standards, and Microsoft would never fork a GPL project since they hate the GPL so much.

    And plus, sun wouldn't need to do any of the work themselves :P

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  6. Good for the web by narfbot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't use java with mozilla because it's bloaty and not very open source friendly. This it sometimes a pain though, not having it available. And of course there are those java programs I can never try. Having an open source version with Sun's support will improve the current mess.

    Somebody make a current open source shockwave plugin!

  7. RedHat's Rawhide by thule · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Recently Rawhide had Eclipse and Tomcat in it. I was pleasantly surpised to see Eclipse running on ppc Rawhide! It looked like they were running it against gcc's java, but after reading that article I was possibly mistaken. Did anyone else look at the Rawhide version of Eclipse?

  8. Sun has been serious about it for a while !! by $exyNerdie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We are very serious about exploring the open-source route," said Alan Baratz, president of Sun's Java software division, in an interview with Wired News in 1998 !!!!


    Also, an Open Source Java Project:
    Ant: The Open Source Java Project

    Ant: work in progress

  9. Isn't it Kaffe? by Jungle+guy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to the Kaffe website, it is a "a clean room implementation of the Java virtual machine, plus the associated class libraries needed to provide a Java runtime environment. The Kaffe virtual machine is free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU Public License."

  10. Why start from scratch? by jyoull · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So they already have source code that works... tell me again why someone has to start from scratch in a "clean room" to build something that validates against the API ? I must have slept through that part.

  11. Um, Classpath? by deblau · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The guys over at GNU are already working on this. The project is called Classpath, it's distributed under a modified GPL so it doesn't contaminate projects it's only linked with, and it's far along already. Most Java 2 classes have been implemented, even though they only claim to be 1.1 compliant.

    --
    This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
  12. I don't see the need... by Cnik70 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As a java programmer, I have never found java to be limited as a closed source language. The overall structure of the language is easily expandable and adaptable enough to fit my daily needs. And by introducing a new non-sun version of java leads to the same problems that M$ had with J++ where 100% pure sun java code is incompatible with other flavors. Sometimes I believe that certain things, especially programming languages, are better left untouched by multiple sources. It strengthens the language when it remains uniform.

    --
    -Cnik
  13. Was this Larry Ellison's idea? by Mannerism · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder how long it would take Oracle to turn an open source JVM into an Oracle product in much the same way as they turned Apache into 9iAS.

    --
    Please donate your spare CPU cycles to help fight cancer and other diseases
  14. Re:Gosling favors Open-Source Java by FatherOfONe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The issue is that RedHat has made a decision to only ship open source software in their distro. So you won't get the good video drivers or a good JVM.

    This could easily be solved if they just shipped Sun's JVM with it, and had the installer agree to the terms.

    Personally I would love a separate RedHat CD or DVD that had "NON GPL" software. I then could load stuff like a good JVM, and good video drivers.

    --
    The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
  15. Re:Gosling favors Open-Source Java by MagikSlinger · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Newsflash: Microsoft has gone and made a better Java -- C#, and funnily enough they not only standardized it with recognized standards bodies (which Sun has never done with Java), they've also released their own shared source version and have not at all stood in the way of third parties making their own implementations (dotGNU, Mono, etc).

    Newsflash: Microsoft patented the CRL layer, so all those "third parties" could be toast anytime Microsoft finds them "inonvenient".

    --
    The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
  16. Java making progress by nepheles · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It seems that Sun is recognising that Java in general was in danger of stagnation. Recently, we've had a major push into the mobile phone arena, the bundling of JREs with Dell and HP PCs, SDK 1.5, and now this.

    This might well be in reaction to the threat posed by .NET, but it seems that Sun are actively seeking to innovate once again, before .NET has a chance to catch up

    And that's, long-term, probably a good thing for the development community
    --
    ((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
  17. Done Before, or done right now? by CptnKirk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I personally like this idea. I think that open sourcing Java would allow other projects to take off much easier (I'm thinking gcj, but I'm sure there are others).

    However how is this effort different from:

    Kaffe - Open Source, way behind the times, in general more annoying that useful, IMO.

    Blackdown JVMs - Best Java JVM available for free on Linux (again IMO). Uses Sun's code, has valuable contributions, but isn't maintained by a large group. As far as I know, only a handful of dedicated people, and only one or two are very public.

    Also, why would Sun suddenly be willing to Open Source Java now when they weren't before? Have any of the open issues changed?

    As far as I know it's a compatibility/brand issue. If Java were open source, anyone could grab the source, tweak it and release their own JVM. If there are a zillion JVMs running around it's possible some won't be compliant.

    What about the JCK? It works fine, but you still run into the embrace and extend issue. Someone takes Java 1.4 and builds custom enhancements to support his/her own Javaesque features. Programms written for this JVM now no longer work on a stock 1.4 VM. Is this VM now legal "Java". I think Sun would say no.

    What about the Java Community Process? Many anti-fork advocates might suggest just contributing to Java via regular channels. Do these channels work? If not, should they be repaired instead of or in addition to Open Source Java?

  18. Re:Gosling favors Open-Source Java by RickHunter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Strangely, this fact seems to be constantly ignored by those driving the .GNU and Mono projects. I wonder why?

  19. Too Late by shrhoads · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As mentioned before, Java is already headed to the land of fully open source native cross platform binaries. The fine GCJ folks have already implemented most of the 1.4 JDK with libjava. Throw in SWT and you have the holy grail of open source software applications development. A single code base that compiles to native binaries for Windows, Linux, MacOS, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc.

  20. Re:too little, too late by f00zbll · · Score: 5, Interesting
    furthermore C# has several useful notions ( delegates, boxed types, attribute annotations,assemblies etc ) not in Java.

    Ok, sounds like you bought the whole PR pitch hook line and sinker. I can say from first hand experience C# is not all it's advertised to be. C# has some nice stuff like properties, but several important pieces are seriously hobbled for enterprise class server applications.

    1. delegates - sounds great on the surface until you realize that writing a multi-threaded/thread-safe application means all calls have to go through delegate. this means for each call to a application running in a dedicated thread, two threads are used. One is used by the delegate. Not only that, for server applications, what you really want is to have direct access to that thread.
    2. assemblies - well recently I experience the same old DLL hell with .NET 1.1 colliding with .NET 1.0. Guess what, there are other critical issues like dynamic loading which do not work as well as Java class loaders. In order to dynamically load/unload assemblies, they have to be loaded in a separate appDomain.
    3. attribute annotation - is nice, but it's hardly critical. Not only that, if you work with a bunch of VB guys, they are so far from annotating their code that you'd have a better chance of getting an experience Java programmer to use attribute annotation correctly. I annotate my code aggressively to point out design decisions and their impact down the line. I also include suggestions and ways to modify the code should the functional requirements change.
    4. thread management using the default threadpool class is weak. There was an article recently in .NET magazine that covered async request handling. The article showed that IIS 6.0 uses the stock ThreadPool, which means improving performance requires writing your own thread pool library.
    5. the caching and default threadpool is really intended as an object cache and isn't well suited to complex multi-threaded applications that manage themselves.
    6. currently there is no object persistence application or layer in .NET. At first glance it doesn't seem like a big deal until you need to handle concurrent access to shared data across multiple systems. Say you have 100 clients that need to access a webservice. The webservices is load balanced across n servers. If multiple users modify common data, how do you manage it? Do you lock the table and use pessimistic locking, or do you naively say we allow for delay and don't care? There are third parties providing object persistence layers for .NET.
    7. stateful application server does not exist in .NET and MSDN states it doesn't plan on providing the support in the near future. For the next several releases the focus is on improving .NET CLR and performance.
    8. session replication across n webservers is not supported natively by IIS. The way it's typically done in IIS is to use database sessions. Tomcat 5 will have session replication built in. There are numerous Java application servers and servlet containers that provide true clustering with fault tolerant sessions.
    9. database clustering is not available as a stock option in Sql Server 2000 or Sql Server 64bit. Typically you have to setup Sql server in partitions and manage the data access with ADO.NET or DAL. Normally when Sql Server is setup in a cluster like TPC benchmarks, it's a custom embedded module. Ask any Sql Server DBA is real-time replication works reliably in Sql Server?
    10. there is no enterprise class messaging server and won't be until Biztalk reaches it's second or third release. If you don't believe me, try to use MSMQ to handle thousands of message per second with tens of thousands of subscribers. It will take 5-8 years before Biztalk can even get close to IBM MQSeries.

    .NET has it's advantage like the XmlTextReader. The default XML parser in Jav