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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."
Sun fires back over Open Source Java accusations
[PC Pro] 15:13
Sun has offered a frank response to the open letter from Eric S, Raymond, President, Open Source Initiative, in which he called on Sun to make its Java platform Open Source and described the company's Open Source strategy as 'spotty' and 'confused'.
'I'd say this is 100 per cent rant,' Sun's Chief Technology Evangelist, Simon Phipps told us. '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.'
Raymond's first line of attack was to dispute whether CEO Scott McNealy's claim that 'the open-source model is our friend,' has any substance when at the same time Sun is filling the coffers of Linux litigator SCO through licensing deals and still keeps Java under 'tight control'.
'It's pretty difficult to respond to this. He's so out of touch,' said Phipps. 'To even begin one must first address the error in his world view: He has taken quotes given by Scott McNealy to analysts and attacked them as if they were spoken to the Open Source community.
'In fact, Sun has contributed more to Open Source than anybody else bar Berkeley [University of California]. We understand Open Source better than anyone else. IBM is just wrapping itself in the flag, but it still behaves like an old-fashioned systems company. Sun is actually taking the risks. [Raymond] isn't well informed and is ignoring most of the stuff that Sun is doing. He completely ignores things like the Java Desktop, the Java Enterprise System running on Linux in its new servers. He's very selective about what he wants to write about.
For the record, Raymond wrote: 'Sun's insistence on continuing tight control of the Java code has damaged Sun's long-term interests by throttling acceptance of the language in the open-source community, ceding the field (and probably the future) to scripting-language competitors like Python and Perl.'
Phipps responded that Java is not a scripting language, so it is meaningless to make such a comparison.
Raymond also wrote in his open letter: 'Sun's terms are so restrictive that Linux distributions cannot even include Java binaries for use as a browser plugin, let alone as a standalone development tool.' But Phipps responds that SUSE has managed to do so without any problems.
Raymond also says that Sun faces the stark choice of control or ubiquity for Java. Phipps said: 'Java is already everywhere.'
And as for control, Phipps maintains: 'Sun has no more control over Java than anyone else in the Java Community Process'. Besides, he said that since version 2.5 of the Java Development Process that was ratified some 18 months ago it has been possible for anyone to create an implementation of Java that complies with the Open Source requirements. And that includes Java 1.5 which will be out 'really soon' [an alpha was released two weeks ago].
'We don't have an axe to grind with Eric, and we don't have any hostility to what he is supporting. But I don't believe there are any barriers to making Java Open Source,' he said.
'The question he should really be asking is why has no-one else offered to create an Open Source version of Java. Maybe because it's on the 'too hard' list. Sun would support an Open Source version of Java, but it need a lot of money and time to do so. You can't just flick a switch. Right now Sun has higher priorities in the form of Java 1.5,' he said.
Questions of who makes Java Open Source aside, there is a strong demand that it be implemented. When we interviewed Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, last month we asked what the most pressing needs are for the GNU operating system (of which Linux is the kernel), he said: 'We need a free complete Java platform.'
Matt Whipp
Ever,
Heard of OpenOffice/StarOffice? If you haven't I suggest you look it up. You might change you opinion of Sun's contributions to open-source software.
Caution: Contents under pressure
I have just returned from Sun's two day Tech. Day in London. They were keen to push that they were working closely with Open Source. They pointed out that they were doing things such as JDS (Sun's Linux distro for the desktop - it's pretty much just Suse atm), NetBeans (an open source IDE they support and use within Sun One Studio) and so forth.
Now you can't deny they are using Open Source, but I was finding hard to see how they were contributing. Here are some ideas:
(1.) Increased awareness - nah: they are FUDing things as their own work
(2.) Contributing IP - I can't find demonstrable, significant Sun IP that has been changed to be licensed on an OSS approved license (I maybe wrong).
(3.) Giving Java to the community - noooo, you can't even distribute the Sun JVM or JDK with a linux distro.
I think Sun want to do the right thing - I think they think they are doing the right thing - they clearly have a way to go.
Here's an example.
JSF (Java Server Faces)
This is a MVC based framework used in presentation tiers in Java (mostly web based).
Now what Sun did was hire the project lead from Jakarta's Structs to write the spec and an implementation of JSF.
JSF is a direct competitor to Structs! If a Jakarta was a company this would be an incredible agressive tactic. Hire the project lead and get him/her to develop a new more featureful version of his old product.
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Open sourcing 'Java' is an issue of binaries. It's a misnomer in fact. Its not really Java that ESR is calling for to be open sourced. Its Sun's implementation of Java, their JVM. At least as far as I can tell that is what he is calling for.
The Jargon Dictionary.
Founding member of the OSI.
A large number of HOWTOs
Ok, no one huge earth shattering project. An while I cant find it now, in one of the Fetchmail history docs, he readily admits to being a better maintainer then coder.
Even if he was a complete non-coder, The Jargon Dictionary alone would be enough for him to be 'one of the tribe', and worth listening too. But he has managed a not insignificant tool.
But all of that is nothing compared to his work with OSI. Even before that, his non-technical guidance and writings were immensely helpful to the community. Netscape/Mozilla was one of (if not the) first example of closed source being let free. And its still one if the biggest examples.
ESR may have a bit of a primiadonna attitude, but compared to RMS he is humble as they get.
Try: here
-- "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur."
- Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.
Since when is Sun a friend of open source?
Sun pays for NFS v4 port to Linux.
Sun supports Xemacs.
Sun donates internationalization code to X.org.
Sun buys StarOffice and donates the code to OpenOffice.
Sun support development and porting of TCL.
Sun donates elliptic curve technology to openssl.org.
Etc., etc., etc.
Sun established open standards, such as: NIS, NFS, etc., etc.,...
Sun is a much bigger friend to "open source" and *nix than just about any other corporation.
So, are you trolling, or uninformed? Maybe just abusing a friend to open source?
I for one don't acknowledge ESR as being a 'steward' of Open Source. I think of him as a self appointed PR, not really for Open Source, but for himslef.
He coined the phrase "Open Source". He convinced Netscape to open up Mozilla. He was the first person to document and publicise the open development model in any meaningful way. He's developed and contributed to many Open Source/Free Software projects. I'd say he's earned his high profile. He hasn't earned "stewardship" over Open Source, but I don't think he acts that way.
Of course, you seem to be mixing up Free Software and Open Source. He doesn't speak for the Free Software movement at all.
In the end I only acknowledge those who write more code than manifestos and open letters as being the true promoters of open source.
He has developed and contributed to many Open Source projects.
ESR should shut up and pick up a copy of the Java standard
Java isn't a standard. It's a specification with multiple implementations. That's the whole point. C# has been submitted to ECMA for standardization, the same way C and C++ have been standardized.
If he wants to keep promoting himself as a self proclaimed emissary, at the expense of Java and Open Source, then he should probably keep doing what he's doing now.
Last time he asked a company to open up their source, we got Mozilla. I hope he does carry on with what he is doing.