Sun's Simon Phipps Answers ESR On Java

comforteagle writes "Sun's Chief Technology Officer Simon Phipps has answered Eric Raymond's open letter calling on Sun to open source Java." In the quoted response, Phipps says (condensed) "I'd say this is 100 per cent rant... His simplistic accusations don't hold water... If this is the way that Open Source treats its friends, I'd hate to see how it treats its enemies... It's pretty difficult to respond to this. He's so out of touch."

Comments

So where's the problem, Phipps?

[dacarr]

The engine is already overbloated and lacks optimization. I've seen it take down a 3 GHz machine with 512 MB RAM just by running simple scripts. If this is what closed source gets us, I sure as hell don't want it.

That's a joke, right?

[Chibi Merrow]

Do you honestly think RMS would write something better than ESR on this matter? ESR just pointed out Java would get wide acceptance as an open source standard much like NFS where other Sun innovations have failed for being closed and proprietary. RMS would just point out how evil and wicked Sun is for distributing binaries without the source and not GPL'ing all their code.
I can't read Mr. Phipps' response currently, but I think he's the one out of touch on this issue after reading the well written and argued (along with politely worded) letter from ESR.

Bottom line: The Free Software community hates Sun like it hates all other developers who keep their code closed. So if you're expecting a Sun Love-In from RMS, you'll be waiting a long time.

Completely Uncalled For

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

He just wrote comparator for the fight against SCO. Also, I have never seen him stoop as low as you have by trash talking like "I piss on him" and you wondering who'd have sex with him. If he pisses you off so much, why not just rise above talking shit on /. and meet him man to man?

I'll be betting on ESR and his martial arts vs your typing ability.

Open Source better off without ESR

[Euphonious Coward]

Here's what I wrote on Advogato:

The Open Source world is in pretty sad shape when it finds itself pleading with some rapacious corporation to free a stupidly-designed language created, in the first place, just to attack some other even-more rapacious corporation. Sun is free (and welcome) to make itself irrelevant to Free Software, and the world at large. It would already be forgotten if not for its multi-billion dollar bank account, which (incidentally) feeds OpenOffice and SCO alike. Java is already irrelevant to Free Software. As Sun fades from our minds, so will Java, and good riddance.

It makes me feel better to think that Free Software is not in similarly sad shape. Then I look at the Mono and dotGNU projects. They're not begging anybody, exactly. One might say, rather, that they're asking for it. I'm not sure which is worse. I guess this is what mainstream is like: fools make themselves irrelevant, the rest of us (or "them", maybe) go about our business, and it all comes out OK, because we're not in the middle of an apocalyptic struggle any more (silly SCO sideshow notwithstanding).

Re:Sun on IBM

[Aardpig]

I dunno, how about OpenOffice, NIS, NFS, and on and on and on...

Both NIS and NFS predate Linux, and I'm not sure how much help Sun provided in porting them to Linux. Furthermore, they're not particularly close to the heart of the Linux kernel; it could be claimed, quite reasonably, that IBM's contributions to the kernel carry much greater weight.

It's also worth mentioning that NFS is one of the biggest potential security holes in the UN*X world; some therefore regard it as a mixed blessing, preferring alternatives such as AFS or Coda.

Disclaimer: I'm not much of a fan of Sun, finding their products overpriced, underpowered and filled with bugs. The only thing I can say in their favour is their high-quality customer facing and support. So there you are.

Re:Sun doing a good job?

[ajagci]

Sun has to open source their JVM.

Oh, dear, I did it too, referring to the platform as the "JVM". No, it's not sufficient for them to open source their JVM; if they want to make Java an open platform, at this point, they would have to open source their entire JDK 1.5 implementation, without conditions or strings attached. But, for the reasons I already mentioned, I don't think a truly open Java is even desirable. Java should just get replaced instead.