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Sun and Eclipse Squabble
gbjbaanb writes "CNET news is reporting on a potential spat between Sun and Eclipse: 'Sun Microsystems has sent a letter to members of Eclipse, urging the increasingly influential open-source project to unify rather than fragment the Java-based development tool market.' Although Sun's letter says it wants interoperability, and a 'broad base' for java tools, it then insists Eclipse should push to be a 'unifying force for Java technology'. Competing tools is a good thing, but it sounds like Sun just wants everything to work its way."
But it will be short-lived... maybe only a few minutes. Then Sun will be back.
Who in the sane mind would ask such a thing... Come on, wasn't java supposed to be write once run everywhere..., So how on earth multiple IDEs are going to cause problem...
...Slashdot is days late on the scoop. The Java community has already figured out that this is business as usual between Sun and IBM.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Maybe if Sun actually released the source to Java under a free license, maybe, just maybe, people might improve it and use it.
You don't know what you're talking about. Sun gives away Forte for Java under an Open Source branding (think Mozilla/Netscape). The real reasons for this squabble go back to '01 when IBM released Eclipse after inviting every company except Sun to join the project. At the time, Netbeans/Forte was very mature and would have been a good choice for IBM to build their own platform off of. Instead, they named their product as a way of snubbing Sun, and used their own proprietary GUI API so the two projects could never interoperate.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I don't think it's as bad as the poster implies. Let's look at the facts:
1: Sun develops Java. We all owe them for that. Let's face it. Love it or hate it, Sun has created a widely used language. They control what goes into the language.
2: Eclipse, as a development platform, is gaining ground all the time. Great. I'm all for diversity.
But, Sun's position is understandable. The presence of programming tools, in this corporate climate, can make or break a language. It seems like sun, more or less, is looking to have a more formal place in Eclipse's management. Conspiracy theories, of course, are abound.... except,
JAVA IS SUN'S LANGUAGE. Imagine, if Sun had more a voice in eclipse development, think of what is possible!!! What a concept? The language developers and the IDE developers working togeter?
Sorry for my smart-assed comments. What my point is, this has just as much potential to be a good thing for Eclipse. Sun is certainly capable of providing constructive agreement, and the Eclipse foundation doesn't actually need to listen to Sun. I just think that there's a lot of potential for cooperation.
Recursive (adj.): see 'Recursive'
Sun - Shit or get off the pot.
Honestly, Sun has been a perpetual source of sub-standard implementations of their own technologies for almost 10 years. What is the most trusted Java JVM for Linux or BSD systems? IBM JVM 1.3.1 "Black down". Increasingly this is no longer the case, as sun continues to revise the Java API faster than a decent implementation can be produced. I ask, Sun wants their net beans IDE to be "The One". Why?
It's not as if they have done a great job implementing their own technologies in the past. In fact Sun is responsible for a day to day lack of leadership of the Java Platform as a whole. Take for example the great mess of XSLT and XML parsers. Sun's "reference implementations" of such things are infamous in the developer community. Incomplete implementations and low performance drive developers to find other tools, which may or may not do things the way that sun wants - more importantly it creates an environment where developers must use different tools to get the same job done, creating incompatibility and complexity in an environment that carries compatibility as a flag of independence.
IBM has finally rallied around the notion of Linux and Java as a common platform - and Sun in usual fashion tries to "gain control". I ask the community what has Sun's control *REALLY* gotten us besides a mess of different API's, frameworks and "reference implementations".
I find this interesting, considering that, not too long ago, the Eclipse consortium offered to join with Sun (and even change to a less threatening name if need be). Sun however, turned them down.
Personally, I like the direction that Eclipse is going. I tried Forte once and it just didn't feel right. Eclipse however, has been fantastic since I found it and started using it as my work IDE. (My whole project team adopted it as well.) It has made coding Java a pleasure as no other IDE (in any language) has, and has led to me using Java as a development language for personal projects where I otherwise would have used C or C++. I've largely given over using XEmacs for coding Java. I'm also impressed by the speed of the Eclipse development cycle with new milestones coming out approximately every month. I always get this kid-in-the-candy-shop feeling checking out the New and Noteworthy page with each new milestone.
Sun (to Eclipse): Hey, knock that crap off!
Eclipse (with exaggerated innocence): Moi? Whatever do you mean?
Sun: You know.
Eclipse: Actually, no, I don't.
Sun: Don't be coy!
Eclipse: YAWN. Do you have something to say or what?
Sun: You know damn well we're working on Swing, and Netbeans, and all that, and here you come out with SWT and start going off on weird tangents, I mean, hell, who's in charge here? I thought you were going to be cool about this.
Eclipse: I am. People really dig java, and they're having a blast using Eclipse to work on it.
Sun: Yeah, thanks a lot, poor Forte...
Eclipse: I didn't tell you to charge so much for it.
Sun: I didn't tell you to be free!
Eclipse: No, that was my idea. But it's cool anyway. Anyway, you've got problems of your own. It's like, make up your mind already.
Sun: What the hell are you talking about???
Eclipse: Java 1.1.8, then Java 1.2, then Java 1.3, then 1.4, and every five minutes you "depreciate" something, driving your developers nuts...
Sun: You... How can you... You...
Eclipse: And then there's AWT, no, it's Swing, no, it's going to be some kind of weird beany scheme...
Sun: You... OOOOH you make me SO MAD! Swing was a good idea! So were the beans!
Eclipse: Well, so's SWT. Deal.
Sun: It's not the same thing!
Eclipse: Sure it is.
Sun: Is not!
Eclipse: Is too!
Sun: Is not!
Eclipse: Is too! Anyway, what's the difference? SWT is based on AWT, so it works everywhere, doesn't it? You should really dig it.
Sun: (Sulks)
Eclipse: Aw, come on, join the board of directors. You know you want to. You can even keep your Netbeans. I promise.
Sun: I'll think about it...
Eclipse: Yep. I know.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
beacuse SWT is actually a nice cross platform toolkit, while Swing and AWT are horrible festering pieces of crap.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I think people are missing the point. Java is all about interoperability. Look at J2SE and J2EE platforms... code that is written to a spec can be deployed on any vendor's application server that adheres to that spec... ect. So, why should Java development tools still be proprietary? Thats what Sun is saying. Lets agree on specs like everything else we do. If Joe Hotdog writes a neat plugin for eclipse, it should work in all the other IDE's too. Nobody gives Sun credit for creating a great language and most importantly an open, competitive market.
Because eclipse is taking revenue from the over priced bloatware jbuilder and Sun studio.It's bad [eclipse] because it's free. I thought darl showed us all that this is clearly unconstitutional - there is no profit motive - it's unAmerican damnit - only a monopoly can truly bring us together /sarcasm
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ymmv
Is it all about Swing vs AWT? I hope not. I think Eclipse is great! But Eclipse got it right and Sun got it wrong. I want my user interface to look like the operating system I'm using (not Java L&F) and I want it to be natively quick. Please compromise Sun - The native approach is better as long as the toolkit can always guarantee to draw the lowest common denominator. That's what Java should be - write once, run everywhere, to the best of individual platforms abilities.
You don't know what you're talking about. Sun gives away [netbeans.org] Forte for Java under an Open Source branding (think Mozilla/Netscape). The real reason for this squabble... ...is because Eclipse is an order of magnitude better than Forte. Sun wants to use it's clout to get some control over it, and who can blame them? You were doing fine right up until there.
It requires very little effort to identify the reasons why Eclipse is better than Forte. Any fool can see this, so I won't waste time on it.
[IBM] used their own proprietary GUI API so the two projects could never interoperate.
They created an entirely new GUI API because Swing sucks. A better GUI for Java was desperately needed. Swing does not approach the results of a native GUI application, while SWT does. The SWT GUI in Eclipse is better than the GUI provided by the native OS in most cases.
Eclipse and Forte aren't even in the same ballpark. The phrase "universal tools platform" actually means something with Eclipse.
The battle is over. Eclipse won. The result isn't due to some IBM conspiracy against Sun. It's due to Eclipse being a better product.
they named their product as a way of snubbing Sun
The character of your rival says much about you. Sun and IBM are competing rivals. Nothing more ugly than that. It's a credit to Sun than IBM should name their work in such a way. It's Sun's job to remain worthy of that credit.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Who in the sane mind would ask such a thing...
.NET start really competing for developer mindshare. And yes, I'm sure that will happen soon. Is that so difficult to see?
A sane company who's trying to beat everyone's favorite convicted monopolist at gathering developers around their campfire for the next big platform of application development (i.e. this Internet thing). Can you name more than 3 IDE's for Windows development? No fair using Google....
What I'm saying is that I think that Sun wants to have "... all the wood behind one arrowhead " when Java &
Anyway, my prediction is that IBM will have a good laugh about this whole thing. They'll ignore it, continue to make gobs of $$$ off of their services division, and not worry about fighting Microsoft directly. It's worked well for them for 20 years... why stop now?
--Mid
I've tried the 2 of them and they both are pretty decent IMHO. The big difference, and I mean big, is how responsive each are on a fairly moderate system. After starting forte, I can go have a coffee and a smoke and maybe even take a quick nap...at which point forte should be running when I get back and I can then get to work.
Eclipse on the other hand is really fast. When I first tried it I couldn't believe that it was a Java program. It even looks good, rather than that ancient, dull look that most Java apps have.
Since then, I've upgraded to a P4 with 1G ram and they both run pretty good (although Eclipse is still much faster). I do like both of them but Sun and IBM and anyone else interested in furthering Java should collaborate on 1 killer IDE that puts any MS tools to shame, and allows lazy programmers (like me!) to be more productive in less time :) As Eclipse appears superior to forte and probably has the largest installed base (don't know how it compares to Jbuilder) Sun would probably get a lot more respect from developers.
-Pat
I'm beginning to think that Sun's a company of very bright engineering types. Dilbert would only assume that the way he says is doing something is The Right Way. Now imagine if the company was full of Dilberts with not enough PHBs to keep them all in check. I think that's kind of the situation we have with them. They can't understand why everyone else can't see the genius of their solutions. It's just the engineer-with-the-perfect-solution mentality. We all get like that sometimes.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
First, I dont' think it's realistic to cripple a UI's features for crosscompatibility. Second, looks do count or most people wouldn't switch from Swing's nasty ass metal look.
"IDEA uses Swing and it's fast enough. JEdit using Swing and it is fast enough."
The people who use IDEA typically have the money to counteract Swing's slow ass performance (this is a good assumption of someone that drops a couple grand for an IDE). On the other hand, most people like me, do not have the money for a nice rig that costs $3000.
And no, JEdit is not fast enough. That's like saying Netbeans is fast enough. Neither can handle Eclipse's cool coding features on a crappy computer, and neither responds to me faster than I can think (using a crappy under $1000 computer).
"It's not crossplatform in a workable way."
It is, that's why Eclipse is super popular.
It's easy for multiple IDEs to cause problems...
...).
Some form of unification wouldn't be all that bad - but unification should not be misread as "only one IDE".
As much as Sun created a "the same bytecode runs on all platforms" - and the much the same, that XML data is portable between platforms - exactly the same way we would need some unification in the "project properties" files. If you really WANT competition to happen, what we need is a way, that the same project can be opened with a number of IDEs, but before that can happen, we need a good way of doing this. Otherwise we will end up in a situation, where either whole teams need to decide which tool to use (so that the project metadata can be used by all) or there will be a semipermanent importing of projects/project data whenever the structure of the project got changed (e.g. during refactoring) by someone using a DIFFERENT IDE.
(Actually - I would even wish for SOME unification WITHIN eclipse; e.g. with all those DB plugins, wouldn't it be nice, if there was a SINGLE DB-Connection-Manager plugin, which would you would configure for all your DB connections, and other DB plugins would just query that single plugin for the known DB connections and prompt the user which connection to use? -- To ME this sounds a lot better, than to enter the DB configuration [JARs+JDBC URLS+Username+possibly passwords] into EACH DB Plugin (Azurri, DBEdit,
Don't get me wrong, Eclipse has easily managed to "eclipse" XEmacs as my primary IDE (and I've used (X)Emacs as my primary IDE for more than 10 years with no serious contender to its throne). But eclipse definetely has SOME quirks that could use some cleaning up work.
Benedikt
Perhaps you were being too subtle. Next time slip on a banana peel at the end. That might do the trick.
KFG
Sun and IBM are competing rivals. Nothing more ugly than that. It's a credit to Sun than IBM should name their work in such a way.
Indeed. Sun should feel honored to have such a noble and gallant competeing rival pissing on its shoes in public.
KFG
Can you name more than 3 IDE's for Windows development? No fair using Google....
Visual Studio
Delphi
C++Builder
MinGW Developer Studio
Dev C++
...there is no sig...
First, I dont' think it's realistic to cripple a UI's features for crosscompatibility. Second, looks do count or most people wouldn't switch from Swing's nasty ass metal look.
As opposed to SWT's nasty ass Windows 2000 look.
The people who use IDEA typically have the money to counteract Swing's slow ass performance (this is a good assumption of someone that drops a couple grand for an IDE). On the other hand, most people like me, do not have the money for a nice rig that costs $3000.
This is complete bullshit. IntelliJ IDEA runs fine on a PII-333 laptop with 256Mb of RAM, whereas Eclipse runs like complete shit on the same box. Since I don't have $3000 for the new laptop with specs high enough to run Eclipse, I won't be buying up in order to use it any time soon.
And no, JEdit is not fast enough. That's like saying Netbeans is fast enough. Neither can handle Eclipse's cool coding features on a crappy computer,
Well you're right there, at least, JEdit and NetBeans both stink.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I have tried each and every release of Eclipse and found it to be a terrible IDE. It's so unintutive that I could almost believe that Sun made their Solaris developers work on it in secret just to piss of Sun.
What's with SWT? It's horrible to code with. It has no really control over look and feel. You have to dispose of everything explicitly (al la C++) which completely goes against Javas garbage collection paradigm.
I right an app in SWT it looks one way on Windows and another way on Gnome (usually a complete mess on one).
Don't get me wrong I think Forte and Sun One are pretty awful too. The only sensible choice in the IDE market right now is Intellij (no don't work for them). However this IDE is not open or free (unfortunately).
Personally I don't think Sun or IBM are particularly good at writing software and should stick to their Hardware and Consulting (IBM) core competancies.
----
As if to make things worse, SWT is not part of the standard Java package, so you have to make sure it's available for the platform you want to run an SWT-based program on.
Sun might do people a few favours by adopting it.
Interestingly, there's a bigger, more glaring example of an IDE that encourages the use of a non-bundled API, and that API covers way more than UIs: Apple's Xcode (and before that ProjectManager), which is based around Cocoa. Now, theoretically, there's a Java port of GNUStep which is portable, but that's not entirely compatable with Cocoa out-of-the-box (different .nib formats for starters), and it's very much a beta still.
As far as I'm aware, Sun isn't complaining about it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I have tried each and every release of Eclipse and found it to be an excellent IDE. Eclipse 2.0 was good, and it has only improved with version 3 Milestones 4, 5, and 6. Did you sample the new UI changes in M6? Some like it and some hate it. What's considered intuitive isn't necessarily something that can be objectively measured. The first time I tried out Eclipse I loved it. Sure, it has it's quirks (everything is a project of some sort...) but I think it's vastly superior to anything else I've tried. I switched over to Eclipse from Slickedit. I haven't had the opportunity to try out IntelliJ, although I have heard good things about it.
Now about SWT... can you honestly say it's worse than writing Visual C++ UI code? Other than the two drawbacks you mentioned (explicit object freeing, incosistent LAF) how is it worse than Swing? What about the benefits? SWT is much faster than a GUI written in all Swing because it's a wrapper for native widgets. But the SWT and Swing folks have never seen eye-to-eye and I don't expect you and I will either.
Quote: "Personally I don't think Sun or IBM are particularly good at writing software and should stick to their Hardware and Consulting (IBM) core competancies."
I resent that. All the people I work with are really freaking smart and darn good coders, too.
> You have to dispose of everything explicitly (al la C++) which completely goes against Javas garbage collection paradigm.
GC was not made to clean up (native) resource allocations, but only to reclaim memory. You should bear that in mind.
NetBeans (SunStudio) sucks completely, and developers feel more satisfaction making the move to Eclipse. (such as I did)
Eclipse is light years ahead of NetBeans, and gaining developers everyday.
Eclipse has NEVER crashed on me, not once in about a year. nor have I found any bugs. not a one.
Also note that IBM/Eclipse has SWT. SWT is a set of graphical tools that allow you to code once, but run on any OS and look/feel/run "native" to that OS. This sort of replaces AWT/Swing but it ties you to SWT.
Furthermore, there is not Eclipse/RCP or Rich Client Platform. This allows you to use eclipse as your underlying application architecture (sort of like MFC), and end users can't even tell.
There's also "eclipse.exe" and not eclipse.jar.
Sun's problem is that IBM is doing to Java what Sun initially sought to do to Java. IBM is going to steal Java away from Sun within 5 years.
I should mention that whining wont change anything Sun...
What the hell? Sun wants Eclipse to start doing things more like NetBeans? I hope not. I switched to Eclipse because NetBeans was nearly unusable. Ostensibly Sun's move is an effort to prevent vendor lockin, but really, they just want to prevent developers from being locked in to any vendor but Sun.
Eclipse allows you to develop plugins for the IDE, and provides a powerful interface to do so. NetBeans allows for plugins as well. More people are doing plugins for Eclipse. Plugins help drive the market. Seems like Sun has plugin envy.
"Don't define 'interoperability' on your own terms, but rather work with other major players in the industry to achieve actual interoperability," the Sun letter told Eclipse members. "Push the organization to be a unifying force for Java technology."
Sun should take it's own advice. I hope Eclipse doesn't try and fix what ain't broke. Sun should adopt Eclipse's model. It is clearly superior.
SWT is a set of graphical tools that allow you to code once, but run on any OS
That's not strictly true. The GUI widgits in SWT are provided by a shared library compiled for the local platform and linked to Java code with JNI.
This means you need a shared library compiled and tested for your platform. To see what platforms are currently supported and the status of those platforms, check out the port status section of the eclipse homepage.
My impression of SWT is it's more feature rich than AWT, faster and nicer looking than Swing, but the downside is it won't necessarily run on any platform that supports Java.
"The big-picture (goal) is a Java technology solution that ensures no 'lock in' to a given platform," the letter states.
That is, no lock-in other than into Java itself, of course.
In particular, Sun warned that the new bylaws of Eclipse give the position of executive director, now held by an IBM employee, an "unusual amount of power" to dictate the work of the open-source group. Sun also questioned whether IBM employees will continue to make up the majority of project staffers.
Sun is one to talk. Eclipse is open source. Anybody can take it and fork it if they don't like what the Eclipse effort is doing.
That's in stark contrast to Sun's Java implementation: not only is it fully owned and controlled by Sun, Sun even owns the patents and copyrights related to the specifications. And Sun's "Java Community Effort" is run by numerous people from Sun. And because Sun is so afraid that people are going to run away in droves given a choice to do their own thing, they are refusing to open up their Java specs or implementation. They say there is "a risk of forking"--you bet there is, given how poor a job Sun has been doing.
So, what does that mean? IBM has a little influence over an open source effort to produce one of many development tools, an influence that only matters as long as Eclipse does a good job because the minute they stop, people will fork it. Sun, on the other hand, has sunk their teeth and claws into the Java standard and platform and isn't letting go. Sun has the entire industry by the throat and various other unmentionable parts.
Sun's hypocrisy is simply astounding. What I can't figure out is whether anybody at Sun actually believes the PR bullshit they are releasing or whether the entire company is in on it.
Instead, they named their product as a way of snubbing Sun, and used their own proprietary GUI API so the two projects could never interoperate.
You've got to be kidding. SWT is entirely non-proprietary and open source--you can implement it freely, you can change it, you can use the code, whatever.
That is in sharp contrast to Swing. Not only are there no open source implementations of Swing, you can't even implement it without satisfying a boatload of legal requirements imposed on you by Sun.
Hats off to Sun's PR department: they have lots of people like you thinking that black is white.
Consider this: Java on *any* platform also needs some sort of native library for GUI access. It just turns out that they happen to bundle this with the JRE. In fact, if Sun was willing to ship Java without AWT (as it's commonly used in an server environment), they could probably port it to more platforms. Right now, SWT supports the vast majority of the machines currently running Java (Windows/Linux/Solaris/AIX/OS X), but even more "fringe" platforms like QNX.
And it does it pretty well. This is what AWT should have been. The fact that it actually uses the underlying environment effectively means they don't have to update their look and feel every time one of their platforms releases a new UI. As a result, applications look like other native apps, including "themes" and such.