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!"

Comments

Getting there.

[Organized Konfusion]

Read the patch and weep

Re:Getting there.

[Carl]

And some screenshots of Free Swing and Free AWT/2D!

Re:If Sun is on the ropes...

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:We dont need your stinkin java

[Carl]

Wait till you see what happens if you are truely Free to mix and match all that goodness! Sun and Microsoft would never allow something like combining Java and C#. But that is precisely what thos GNU-heads have been doing!

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.

Re:Setting Java free

[greenrd]

JDK 1.5 already was largely designed by committe. Most of the major improvements were designed through the Java Community Process.

ESR should take a finance course

[jsburke]

'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.

ESR: After Sun Goes Out

[scrubjay]

It would seem a bit difficult for ESR to have much credibility with McNealy after he trashed them in his "Sun is dead" article.

Re:If Sun is on the ropes...

[mindstrm]

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.

Re:If Sun is on the ropes...

[technomancerX]

Clarification: you are not allowed to use Sun's documentation / specifications either. So trying to implement a free Java compiler / JVM is like flying blind with half your instruments out. That's why the various OSS Java projects like Kaffe are so behind and so incompatible. Even if, for some strange reason, Sun decides to keep their JVM code secret, they need to remove all the weird documentation licensing (NDA-style stuff).

You are completely wrong. The only limitations are:

1. You can not use Sun's source code
2. If you're going to brand it Java you MUST pass a set of compatibility tests.

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).

lets count the books on Amazon and jobs on monster

[asv108]

All 76021 results for .net :

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.