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ESR's Open Letter to McNealy: Set Java Free!
yukster writes "Eric Raymond has posted an open letter to Sun Microsystem's Scott McNealy asking him to 'Let Java go.' He says Sun can 'have ubiquity or [it] can have control.' The excellent improvements made to Java in the upcoming 1.5 release help re-level the playing field with C#. But, it seems like if Sun really wants Java to rule the world, they should heed ESR's advice. Hey Mr. McNealy, listen to this guy... set Java free!"
Read the patch and weep
So what if Redhat's share price is higher than SUN's? Whose market cap is larger? Who has a higher revenue stream?, Yes, SUN.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cq?s=RHAT+SUNW&d=v1
SUN's is almost 6 times larger than RHAT in term of market cap and that means SUN is almost 6 times more valuable as a company that RHAT in term of dollars!
Just as IBM makes money on Linux, so can SUN, but then again, so what does that have to do with JAVA, necessarily?
Even his asshole doubles in pain for the shit he stuff in his mouth.
"But the casual equation between "open source" and "zero revenue" suggests that on another level you don't really know what you're talking about. Open source is hardly a zero-revenue model; ask Red Hat, which had a share price over triple Sun's when I just checked. Or ask IBM, which is using Linux as a lever to build a huge systems-integration business in markets like financial services that Sun has historically owned."
IBM has been much nicer with Eclipse. And You can now combine that, with GNU Classpath and IKVM.NET to bring you Java Eclipse on Mono .NET!. Be free to mix and match the best of two languages. With Free Software you are free to do what some coorporations would never want to happen. Even if it is the best for developers and users!
Amazing! And of course you can just use java as a as a normal language with GCC (gcj). We even have native eclipse! Super fast, no slow bytecode interpreter needed.
Go away Sun with you proprietary closed non-free java! We don't need you anymore.
Female Prison Rape in NY
'But the casual equation between "open source" and "zero revenue" suggests that on another level you don't really know what you're talking about. Open source is hardly a zero-revenue model; ask Red Hat, which had a share price over triple Sun's when I just checked.'
ESR's casual equation between "share price" and "value" suggests that he doesn't really know what he's talking about. Sun's market cap is 6 times Red Hat's!
But this is nitpicking. His larger point is good.
There are some issues with Sun's licensing for the Java JDK and JRE that make it difficult to include in a free software distribution. Debian has an informative Java FAQ that specifically outlines Java licensing concerns that make it impossible for them to include Java in the main distribution. This includes both items that Debian has philosophical issues with as well as more concrete terms that set strict limits on distributing Sun's Java products.
Basically, Sun makes it hard for free software & open source distributions to include Java, which makes it an additional hassle for the user to install and use. As a result, Java use in the open source community is probably much lower than it could be.
It would seem a bit difficult for ESR to have much credibility with McNealy after he trashed them in his "Sun is dead" article.
You are allowed to develop compilers on your own, for free. Youy are also allowed to develop your own JVM for free.
You are just not allowed to use Sun's code to do it.
What apps? Please name a significant one.
Tricky. I use JEdit, jDiskReport, and Tile Molester a lot (the last is a graphics editor for tile-based console systems), but I imagine you'd counter that none of those are "significant" applications. And you've already ruled out Eclipse, presumably on the grounds that it's incestuous.
How about this lot? Is there nothing significant among that lot?
If not, then please define significant.
Antlr, sablecc: lexer and parser generators.
Jedit, Jext: code editors.
Eclipse, Netbeans, JBuilder: IDEs
Azureus: bittorrent client
jdbc: sql drivers for every database
Gantproyect: clone of ms project
report tools
sql frontends
jgraph: framework to write drawing applications.
Games
sshtools: ssh and ssh vnc client
For starters in souceforge.net there 11000+ projects in Java.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
You are completely wrong. The only limitations are:
Anyone who wants to is free to implement a JVM using the specs. In fact there are a number of them. IBM has their own JVMs. There are also free compilers available (Jikes, GCJ).
.technomancer
All 112533 results for java :
Lets take a look at jobs son monster too
over 5000+ with java
2079 with .net
Lets look at jobs in California as a good indicator of the current state of .NET
1361 w/ the keyword java.
310 jobs with .NET
Now this is obviously not scientific, but it doesn't appear that java is hurting. In fact, it looks like if you wanted to improve your chances of employment, you're better off reading one of those java books.
Clarification: you are not allowed to use Sun's documentation / specifications either.
1000% incorrect. Every API and specification published by Sun regarding Java is open to anyone for re-implementation. Take JBoss, for example. The money comes into the picture when you want to make a Java-licensed product (name, logo, the whole banana) and sell it (e.g., BEA WebLogic).
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
IBM's JDK's are modified versions of Sun's JDK to run on Linux, AIX, and Windows.
IBM get's the latest JDK from Sun - minus Hotspot, then they:
1) Apply their performance improvements from previous IBM JDK's.
2) Port it to Linux, AIX, and Windows.
3) Brand it IBM's JDK.
4) Release the public version.
5) Add the IBM JCE/JSSE library, ORB, and some other proprietary IBM code.
6) Release it under the covers with WebSphere, DB2, WSAD, etc.
Also, IBM is banned by contract from running the modified JDK on Solaris.
In summary, IBM's JDK is Sun's JDK. There is no competing clean-room JDK out there I know of except Kaffe (and TowerJ?).