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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."
I know Mono is quite a young language (if you exclude the work done on c#) but I think that Sun should be wary.
I moved from Java to Mono/c# recently and I don't think I'll be going back.
Don't know what anyone else thinks?
Jonathan Schwartz came to the Utah Java Users Group in January (We got him out here with free tickets to the Sundance Film Festival.). He asked if people felt that Java should be open sourced. About half the audience raised their hands, myself included.
He said that it wouldn't happen because Sun didn't want to see multiple versions of Java out there. If MS went and changed some things in Sun's Java and then started to bundle their version of Java with Windows, who knows what will happen.
We will start to see different versions of Java. People will start to think that the MS version of Java is the actual "real" Java and get mad when someone writes a Java program using Sun's version of Java.
Then, MS will be able to start to dictate what goes in Java, or they will just stop following Sun's vison of Java and go on their own merry way.
He gave more reasons and it convinced me that it really wasn't that great of an idea to open source Java.
Notice how Phillips takes the cheap shot ("rant") in order to play to ESR's current unpopularity with the slashdot crowd? He doesn't try to refute the issues ESR raises.
I guess it's hard to be coherent when your company doesn't really know where it stands wrt open source.
ah, the old ad hominem attack.
Is that all they're teaching folks in MBA school anymore? Don't respond to valid arguments and criticism; instead, discredit your detractors by branding them as "out of touch" or "communist" or a "tree hugger".
It's actually a good response in situations where any response would be the wrong one. Sun could try to explain their reasoning, tell everyone about the SCSL, show all the contributions to Open Source they've made, and they'd still get skewered. At least this way, they have a fighting chance. Quite a few people agree with Sun's position and disagree with ESR. By using the ad hominem response, they're bolstering the opinions of those people and making their voices louder. Any other tack would have made their supporter's voices that much quieter.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin."
:)
P.S. The lameness filter aborted this biblical quote in its proper form
He has taken quotes given by Scott McNealy to analysts and attacked them as if they were spoken to the Open Source community.
;-).
I have some trouble understanding this statement. Does Scott lie to lawyers, or us?
My god, should we only read and consider statements that are directly addressed to us? Should we be spoon-fed by statements that are tailored to what we want to hear (not talking about slashdot here, of course
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
...was pretty good about Java. I've been writing in Java for a long time now, and I like it a lot.
The only gripe I have is that a lot of systems don't have the newer Java 2 VM (it's been out for a few years now, people, update your VM already). A lot of people are still operating with the older standard, so I have to keep the older JDK 1.1.8 development kit around. Sun, if you're reading, launch an ad blitz, educate the nontechnical to visit java.com and grab an updated VM. And make sure you hit some of the "neglected" computer users too, such as school districts. Perhaps press a few million CDs with the Java VM and offer to mail them for free, or reduced postage?
The Java of today is much better than the perceptions of many developers. Java is decently fast, the Swing packages offer a lot of flexibility, i/o support is terrific, etc.
Just one last plea: PLEASE, SUN, stop labeling everything you sell Java. You're diluting the brand.
Similar issues apply to copyrights. I assume there are portions of the Java implementation which are copyrighted from other companies which have licensed to Sun, but do you think these agreements are compatible with Sun putting something out under GPL or BSD? I wouldn't think so.
All of this is a bummer, to put it one way. I can think of some awesome projects to do with Java. How about a TRUE Java Desktop, where we take just enough of the Linux kernel to boot, and rewrite most of the system (device drivers and all) in Java and run the JVM essentially on the "bare metal" with all the apps in Java? That would be awesome, but impossible unless the JVM is Open Source.
Ah, and this brings me to MONO, a project which is a tragedy because it is walking into a big trap called "patents".
The right thing to do is to put the effort into gcj and Kaffe to bring them up to commercial usability. I really think it is time to abandon C/C++ for writing apps. We could debate this all day long (ok, on /., we could debate it until the heat death of the Universe) but the fact is that C++ is a pain to work in and lacks the safety features of Java. I would love to see Open Source development shift to Java. I am scared of Open Source development shifting to MONO/C# because I know that it's a trap.
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Create a WAP server
> The Jargon Dictionary alone would be enough for him to be 'one of the tribe', and worth listening too. He's widely considered to have fucked up the Jargon File, mostly due to his huge ego and lack of respect for history.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
After a few days in which we were quite alarmed, Sun's technical director sent me an email to apologize and said he would fix the matter. Within no time, we got reports of being mentioned on the back of the cd covers and their website, and they sent us an evaluation cd. Our project was even mentioned in an article about JDS in the Guardian. There hasn't been much contact since, but it's good to see how quick they react.
Frankly, I didn't even think they gave a damn, but it seems that despite their size they are trying to do The Right Thing(tm). It's a pity ESR had to open his mouth like he did. They are willing to listen, but at least say something intelligent...
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You have to understand that standardising the syntax of the language means nothing. This is true for both Java and C#. The core syntax of the language is such a small part of the entire platform. You implied that Microsoft is somehow "better" than Sun because they standardised the syntax of the language.
MS is actuallly worse than Sun because they are sneaky. You aren't even allowed to re-implement the MS libraries. Well, they have said that it's mostly OK, but they can pull out various patent lawsuits (patent infrigement?) at a moments notice if a free implementation becomes too good.
Java, on the other hand, is safe to re-implement. Of course, you'll have to play catchup with Sun for every new version, but you can always join the JCP and get a say in what is added to the language. Exactly how do you do that with .net?