Slashdot Mirror
Two Takes on the Java Dilemma
Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is running a pair of excellent commentaries on the plight of Java and the Java development community following the recent "settlement" between longtime rivals Sun and Microsoft. One is by Rick Ross, the articulate leader of JavaLobby, entitled "Where is Java in the settlement?" The second is "Free but shackled: The Java trap" by Richard Stallman. Good reading. Both commentators put their finger on the heart of the problem, albeit from different perspectives." Yes, Newsforge and Slashdot are both owned by OSDN.
My theory is that Sun is going to sell Java, probably to IBM. That's also a reason why Sun is will not
open-source Java. Even if it is losing money, it's still a valuable asset. Sun owns the trademark, many Java-related
patents and is the only company with the authority to prevent Java from being forked.
Sun's threat is to sell Java to Microsoft. Not sure whether MS wants to buy it (they would certainly be
willing to spend a lot of money to destroy it, but it would also annoy many people and renew the antitrust trouble). Losing Java would be so bad for IBM that they would be willing to spent a few billions to save
it. Possibly together with other companies in the Java trap, like SAP.
Sun's control of the Java language is a benevolent dictatorship. If Java was truely Open Source, then Microsoft could have forked it to allowed J++ to exist on Windows and blow a hole in the "write once, run everywhere" theory.
In order for there to be a language that's solid in all environments, there's got to be a gatekeeper at the door.
Isn't it the only real asset that they have left now? If they don't successfully commercialize Java then where do they go next?
The biggest problem is that Java is just another speed bump in the long line of speed bumps called Algol descendents. Its convoluted syntax, unclear precedence rules, and general tendency towards cryptic programs are all problems that originated with Algol back in the 60's and little has been done to improve it. C, C++, Java, C#, they all suck because Algol sucked.
While we could probably debate for days the benefits and pitfalls of a language like LISP, the only good thing we can say about Algol-like languages is that they are pervasive. There are so many alternative languages that new language designers can base their syntaces on that it only shows the lack of creativity and knowledge of language history when language creators use Algol as the base of their languages.
I have been pwned because my
It seems quite certain that Java is doomed: Microsoft did not pay $2bn just because it likes the sound of change dropping. It wants Java dead, and .NET to be the main platform for large applications. It hopes to cripple IBM this way. Most likely Sun's refusal to open source Java was based on the promise of the upcoming funds.
So: Sun will slow down and finally stop development of Java. IBM will either try to roll-out its own compatible platform or propose a migration to something else.
And RMS will be muttering: "those fools, those fools, if only they understood what the GPL was about". And he would be entirely right.
OTOH, perhaps I'm just being paranoid and Microsoft will allow Sun (which is now a neutered zombie company selling its own living organs for booze money) to continue supporting one of the main obstacles to its domination of the platform business.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Those two commentaries are informative and are interesting. I find Rick Ross's more to what I would say myself about the topic. What -did- we fight so hard for?
Isn't Algol the d00d who said he invented the Internet and then went and lost the 2000 election?
As soon as RMS says something like "If your program is free software, it is basically ethical" I have to force myself to keep reading. It's a real bitch when that sentence is the first in the article.
RMS has a very valid point. My open source Java software depends on non-free java compiler and runtime environment.
I continue to write free software in java because Java is sexy, and I believe that Java will one day be free (or have some free implementation). Many of the things that I can do in java would be very hard in any other language. Namely having a GUI program that can run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
I disagree with RMS that we should not accept this even temporarily. I write open source Java libraries under the GPL so that people who find them useful and want to use them must adopt the GPL. Planting open source seeds in the Java community will help in the liberation of the platform as a whole.
Having such a setup is currently non-trivial. I have tried many times but have yet to get one to work. The gjc compiler is not hard to get working but getting a jre and the classpath libraries set up is beyond my skill level. Rather than appealing to developers, making free runtime easy to set up is the best way to make this happen. I applaud RMS for his work in this area, but it is not yet practical to take his advice.Note that the BileBlog has many, many vicious postings on various Java and open source topics - Maven, XDoclet, "J3EE", etc.
In some cases, though, as they say - "it only hurts because it's true".
The Army reading list
And RMS will be muttering: "those fools, those fools, if only they understood what the GPL was about".
He mutters that constantly anyway, you insensitive clod!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
A slow bloated language-maker goes to bed with a slow bloated OS-maker. Can make more slow bloated software...
More seriously though, Java has lost to C#, dotNet and whatever Microsoft vaporware-du-jour. Plain and simple. The only reason Java has been around for so long is because Microsoft was slow to really set its target on it in the past.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Get real. See all those Java jobs out there? I know a few months ago there were more of those than any other language. I doubt that has changed... or will change in the near future.
Sun could drop off into the Pacific tomorrow, and Java would keep on going because in a lot of places it's the best tool for the job. As much as they would like to, neither Gates nor Stallman is going to change that fact. If Sun (under MS's influence) tries to corrupt or hamstring Java, IBM, Blackdown et al will simply fork it, and everybody will start using theirs.
Garg
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
RMS's talk of a Free World devoid of any contamination by non-free dependency sounds eerily like Juche. I guess self-reliance is nice and all but all the talk of "rescuing Java programs" from "shackles" seems to remove one of the most basic freedoms: the freedom of choice. I myself must not only be free but must all of my friends must be free as well? And if they aren't, I really shouldn't because that's just accepting their unacceptable lifestyle?
That just doesn't sit well with me.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Many people have argued that it doesn't do Sun any good to "open source" Java. They might be right. You can argue that an open source Java may have a good chance of becoming _the_ platform for software development, but Sun may no longer profit from it regardless. From Sun's point of view, they really don't see the benefit.
Well, screw them. I don't care about Sun. I'm a programmer, and all I want to do is write a piece of software that I can move from system to system without a lot of pain. Swing is the best toolkit out there for this, right now. It is relatively well documented, consistant, and available to any programming language that can run under the JVM. It can run on multiple operating systems, looking fairly native-like, or with it's own ugly but usable UI where a native look-and-feel isn't available. Some classes, like JOptionPane, actually require fairly small amounts of code to do relatively robust things.
The Java platform has a huge number of libraries available for it, and they work all over the place.
There might be no benefit to Sun in open sourcing Java. But there is benefit to me. I want to be able to rely on Java as a platform, but right now any Java developer would be rather screwed if java.sun.com disappeared. I don't like that risk, and I won't build a Java application (except for consulting work - who cares there) because of it.
(I'm not interested in alternative programming environments, by the way. I already know about them - after all, I don't do Java development, like I said.)
the Gnu dialect of the C language shows you don't need a "benevolent" dictator. Its been around much longer than Java. Its probably used by more people. Its GPL'ed. And yet it hasn't led to a GNU-C linguistic forkfest.
(the same argument applies to nearly every library under the GPL, does it not?)
If it were free software, Microsoft probably would not go anywhere near it.
From the first day, Sun wanted Microsoft involved. That is a primary reason why it is not free.
If it were free software, Microsoft could not blow any hole in the "write once, run everywhere" theory, unless there was truly no one who cared about providing compatible libraries between the platforms.
Java still lacks a reasonable cross-platform UI, which it lacked at the outset. I have no doubt that free software would have served Sun and everyone else better in this respect.
Where does RMS get off? Java belongs to SUN, they are the one who invested the time, money and effort to develop it. If you dont like it go build your own version rather than trying to imply that SUN are unethical or trying to maliciously entrap developers.
RMS might better ask why Java has been so successful. It addressed a gap in the market, not its original intention but a need none the less and developers like it. There is an extensive Java developer base now. RMS's comments have a serious smack of petty jealousy about them. Shock horror a commercial company came up with something that has attracted developer mindshare on a far larger scale than anything FOSS can manage and almost 10 years down the line the 'free alternative' is still so half assed its not even a realistic alternative.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Is there a good Free implementation of Java? I've been looking at the Kaffe project.
Constitutionally Correct
Java and C# are crufty languages anyhow.
I don't care much for OO myself, but many people say at least the newer Java implementations are really quite good.
What put me away from Java since the beginning is the size of the executables, and their truly atrocious speed. And also the size and speed of another monster called Swing.
But, I remember a certain OS called Unix that used to be the archetype of bloatware, with a graphical system that used to open 2 megabyte (gasp!) temp files, in the past. Now that computers have caught up with it in terms of memory and speed, Un*x looks thin compared to Windows, and its creators seem like precursors and visionaries.
So sometimes I wonder if I'm not missing a boat with Java : perhaps it too is ahead of its time, and one day nobody will balk at the speed, because it'll run fast by virtue of the underlying hardware.
But I guess now that Microsoft and Sun have agreed to kill it, the question of whether or not I should try it is getting moot.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Can you create scalable, distributed appliations that run inside an application server with Phython?
;)
Do you have the same array of libraries and APIs in Phython?
Me don't think so.
JavaMail? JTSA? JNDI?
You could JPhython of course
So Phython in itself is simply not a viable
programming language.
Just go to big companies and try to sell them
something written Phython.
Java has lost to C#, dotNet and whatever Microsoft vaporware-du-jour.
.NET "vaporware?" It *exists*, dude. My company has been using it for a couple of years now, and making good money selling ASP.NET web apps written in C#.
Uh... what? How is
Did someone change the definition of "vaporware" while I wasn't looking?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
If you develop a Java program on Sun's Java platform, you are liable to use Sun-only features without even noticing. By the time you find this out, you may have been using them for months, and redoing the work could take more months. You might say, "It's too much work to start over." Then your program will have fallen into the Java Trap; it will be unusable in the Free World. -- RMS
I generally respect RMS, but I have a problem with this. Like it or not Sun (and others via the JCP) set the Standard for Java. I fail to see how using the Standard is falling into a trap.
The real reason Java would be unusable in Stallman's "Free World" is because the current, free compiler is sub-standard.
I shouldn't use the features supported by Sun, Blackdown and IBM because the GNU Java Compiler hasn't caught up with the pack?
Now, whose trap is that again?
Or some other way of disambiguating all those "free"s scattered throughout his article. That word's as overloaded as a ctor. Perhaps a complementary program to RMS-Lint would be good?
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
Would Stallman then advise us to avoid the Electricity Trap?
Did you even read the article? RMS never told Sun what to do. He was speaking to programmers who write software using Sun's Java platform. It is those programmers who think they are writing free software, and may not realize that it really is not free after all. His audience does not include Sun programmers; they are already aware that their software is not free--they need no warning.
He is cautioning those people who desire to write free software to reevaluate whether they are really achieving their own goals, to not be blinded by Java's sexiness and Sun's apparant benevolence. But to say that RMS want's to force Sun to do business in a different way is to read something that I'm not seeing in his article.
Absolutely, thank you.
From RMS: "If you develop a Java program on Sun's Java platform, you are liable to use Sun-only features without even noticing."
Does anyone have a clue what he's talking about? The "com.sun.*" libraries? How could you use those without noticing?
Doesn't sound like this guy has ever programmed in Java.
According to the Borders metric, java is dead.
The Borders metric is where you wanter into a Borders book store and count the shelf space allocated to each subject. Some subjects grow to several racks and then die out and others just sort of stay at their 1/4 rack for ever (like Ada, Fortran and C).
Sun won't release the source code for their JVM and Java compiler, but they allow development of an open-source compiler and VM or a Java-to-C[++] translator which can be used for future-proofing today's Java applications. Therefore, programming- and CS-savvy amateurs and professionals should undertake such a project to improve their skills and make the world a better place in which to live.
Damn filter turned =.>. into .=.
Rick Ross made this parting shot in the close of his article:
I hope you will join me in watching how things progress before we draw conclusions about this settlement (or was it a purchase?)
The body of the article was well-written and I agree completely with his fundamental question -- where is Java in this settlement? I was shocked to hear pretty much squat about Java in the wake of the settlement, and I think his point that we must just wait and see is unfortunately correct.
But this little jab right at the end wasn't in keeping with the rest of the article. I wish he had instead expanded upon the idea of "What sorts of things might there be in the settlement, both good and bad for Java and/or Sun?". It almost feels as though it was inserted by someone else, it trips up the reader (well, me anyway) so badly.
- Leo
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
Java is an open specification. The libs are open specifications. Just because the FSF hasn't been able to finish an implementation doesn't mean it can't be done.
Stallman's argument about libraries being required to conform to the specs if they're publicly available is also a load of crap. Basically it only applies if YOU CLAIM TO IMPLEMENT THE API. In other words, don't claim to be J2EE compliant until you actually are. There is nothing stopping anyone from starting a project and saying "Out goal is to build a system fully compliant with API x." and developing it. The only restriction is you can't claim to be API x compliant until you are. That's a real hardship, being required to actually support the feature set you claim to.
I'm sorry, I develop in Java (in addition to C, C++, Perl, and PHP) and I like to know that if something says it complies with specification X that it actually does.
Also, as a side note, Java is not going anywhere. SAP, Oracle, and IBM have too much of an investment to let Java die. Sun could declare bankruptcy tomorrow and IBM would buy the technology tomorrow, guaranteed.
.technomancer
So what are you trying to say? Is Ralph Nader for or against Java?
I think its more from the fact everyone wants to write components but no one wants to write applications.
Combine that with trying to make it be everything to everyone when neither it or the community behind is capable.
Being in an IBM shop (minis and mainframes) we get bombarded with IBM's fascination with JAVA. What has this netted us so far? Simple, applications that take forever to load, don't provide usuable feedback when a problem occurs, and generally don't do as much as the purposeful written applications they replaced did. Hell I have green screen alternatives to JAVA apps IBM tries to get us to use that are many times faster and reliable.
JAVA does not belong on the desktop. It was fine in the browser and that is where it should have stayed.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
RMS's point wasn't that Sun is doing something wrong by holding onto Sun. RMS's point was to say to the Free Software community that any software they write that depends on a non-Free platform, library, whatever is not truly Free. Like he said in the article, this is the same as his beef with KDE - but that beef is now gone thanks to TrollTech going to a dual-license scheme.
His point is that Free Software developers who choose to use Java are entraping themselves, not that Sun is trying to maliciously entrap developers.
It's also worth pointing out that at no point in the article was he talking about OSS developers.
I'm sorry, but .NET is garbage - too much glitter and not enough of the important stuff like platform-independence.
.NET to develop any serious web applications. While you are correct that it sacrifices platform-independence, you are way off the mark when you call it "garbage." If you are using Microsoft products from end-to-end, .NET is actually an extremely powerful and simple platform.
.NET, connecting to a Microsoft SQL Server backend, hosted on Windows2000 server boxes, with clients all running various Windows boxes, using IE. We test with Mozilla and older versions of Netscape too.
You clearly have never used
We develop web applications using Visual Studio
We've found this setup to be extremely powerful, allowing very rapid development. Sure, it's homogeneous, but so what? It's working great for us, and our customers.
Since we are hosting the actual sites, we get to control the backend platforms. And we've chosen Windows. So, there's no issue about "platform independence." We've chosen a platform that enables us to deliver the best results to the customers, on a very rapid schedule.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
They're probably stuck with trying to re-implement the package handlers so they can preface everything with gnu/ :-D
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
the "write once, run everywhere" theory.
A theory it certainly is.
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/jre/install.html
Solaris Operating System J2RE for Solaris OS 32bit
Solaris Operating System J2RE for Solaris OS 64-bit
Microsoft Windows J2RE for Windows 32bit
Linux J2RE for Linux 32bit
Not exactly comprehensive
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
What, like Zope, you mean? :-)
Or, on a more serious note, like these guys?
The problem was too many of Sun's people were pissed off that Microsoft's first JVM was blowing the doors of Sun's and every publication said so. People at Sun were too worried that Java would become too closely associated with Microsoft, and Sun would be forgotten as the creator of Java. You had people running around basking in the glow of their favorable Java press, more worried about losing it, than about how they were going to make money.
Microsoft went so far as to offer to show Sun how they had optimised Java in exchange for permission to continue their work. Sun thought in unacceptable that Microsoft be known as doing Java better than they did, so they pulled the plug on their largest potential market out of pure spite over being outdone.
I'm glad they did, because C# rocks. Sun never gave a damn about their developer community, they only cared about making sure no one else got any credit at all.
I actually read the Stallman article (yeah I know this is slashdot). One thing bothered me as I read majority of the article is Stallman's use of GPL and free interchangebly.
My main problem is "free" means free. But in the GNU context "free" means "GPL'd". There is a problem here GPL'd software is not really free, it is freedom with restrictions. Java is also free software with restrictions, mainly not being able to modify it. GPL goes one step further allows modification but with the restriction that the modifications also be made freely available. Thus GPL is a little more free than Java but not completely free in the true sense of the word.
Suppose I released some software completely free. Free to use, modifiy and redistribute without realsing any of the modification under a new FSL (free software License). Said software would also be shackled when run with dependencies of GPL'd software which is not as free as the software I just released, lets call it the GPL trap. Or any software linked with GPL'd software must also be released under the GPL. Java doesn't require you to follow its licensing terms, one may release Java programs under the GPL.
As I have just illustrated, different degrees of freedoms exist in the world and mean different things to different people. Java is free, as in no monetary cost to use, GNU software is more free as in it is free to modify, but there is also a definiftion for free as in "no restrictions, no cost" which the GPL'd software like GNU/linux is clearly not. So I would like Mr. Stallman to please stop using the word free interchangebly with GPL'ed software, so as not to confuse readers.
Freedom is a deeply philosophical term of which excrutiatingly long discussions can ensue. However, Java is free, albeit with restrictions, GPL is a little more free but also with restrictions.
If the corporate world decides that Java will not be supported with improvements from Sun, and without IBM able to take over due to no Open Sourced version, they will drop Java faster than you can say C#. Nobody is going to run their business on obsolete stuff, no matter how good it is now.
When I see a screenful of lisp, I see words and brackets. I have to read in order to parse struture.
When I see a screenful of java, even a brief glance shows me what's going on. I can recognise a for-loop, a while with an Iterator, a method definition, a method call, an assignment. I can see the try and catch blocks. Before I mentally parse any of the words.
Lisp isn't code. Lisp is assembler for the Lisp VM, that somebody forgot to write a code parser on top of.
There were more Java jobs than any other language? Really? Or do you just mean there were more adverts mentioning the buzzword "Java" than any other buzzword? There's a world of difference.
As for changing, tell that to all the VB6 developers.
So do you work for Sun PR, or are you someone who's built a career around developing in Java and is desperately willing what he says to come true? Blanket statements like the above are meaningless: there is no job for which, other things being equal, Java does not have at least one serious rival. Often the best tool is decided by who you happen to have on your development team, rather than an odd detail supported by Java but not by <alternative of choice>.
If Java rolled over and died tomorrow, some people/businesses who'd invested too much in it would get hurt, and then the software development world would move on, just as it always has.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If python werent so bedraggledly slow, and had a sane context-free grammar, I'd use it in a heartbeat.
No matter what the argument, having INVISIBLE characters of indeterminate size be syntax significant seems too rigid for my taste.
Being so inflexible in even the most trivial of things seems to be the foundation for the whole language, and is probably the number one reason why python hasnt taken the world by storm.
I'm willing to bet 50 years from now, Mainframes and high end Unix servers will still be around. Will IBM, HP and Sun be in the same position they are today? I doubt it. Nothing is static and everything changes. Sure, Sun made some huge mistakes by falling behind on their UltraSparc development. Was it foolish for Sun to not cut back on R&D a little and bring it into focus? Sure, but hind sight is always 20/20. If another huge break out of virii slam Windows and causes major lawsuits for companies exposing their data, Microsoft could find itself fighting battles it can't win. Will it kill microsoft, not likely, but it will hurt. things change because it's human nature.
It has been possible for years to quickly and easily develop cross platform GUI's with Tcl and Tk. I just sold an application to a local bookstore that I developed entirely on Linux and then tested a bit on windows before delivering it. Tcl and Tk are quick to develop in, faster than Java for GUI's, and are under a BSD style license.
If Tcl and Tk don't float your boat, check out wxWindows, it looks pretty good as well.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Ok coward perhaps Microsoft should quit using python. Perhaps it was all smoke and mirrors that they paid to port it to windows. No coward you did not list a darn thing that I cannot do with standard python. No I guess BitTorrent is not a scalable distributed application. Boy I guess every argument you just made fell flat on it's face.
Got Code?
Okay, so the guy had done a lot for the software industry but let's get real: Show of hands--how many of us would have decent jobs if all software were completely free as defined by Stallman? Uuuuhhh... yeah, I thought so. The man needs to come down from his ivory tower and look at how the real world works.
I've used Java for over seven years and have never paid Sun a time for it. Likewise we use Java in our product and neither us nor our customers have paid Sun a dime for it--though they have paid a lot for our product! And damn glad I am, too, that they buy our software. It pays our bills and gives me some time to contribute to at least one free project. Now what is so wrong with this picture?
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
So, here's the executive summary:
Article #1 (by the leader of JavaLobby) says "Oh, no, Sun (a commercial body) have given up and sold out our precious Java in the way we always knew they could!". And a world of C and C++ developers rose up and cried as one, "We told you so."
Article #2 (by RMS) says "See, commercial software development sucks, and everything in the world should be free." And a world of developers rose up and cried as one... oh, no, sorry, they just ignored yet another RMS rant, noting that as usual he failed to address issues like how to pay the rent with free software, how projects without strong leadership usually fail, and how no successful programming language in recent history has developed without someone controlling what goes in and attempting to keep all implementations compatible.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
...that you're blaming poor UI design and slipshod coding on the language.
I really don't see the reasoning behind anyone actually wanting to deal with { } ; just to have
//end function //end class
a free form language. What does context-free grammer
do for you? Is it fun to type all that extra garbage, does it add to the functionality of the language? I write C C++ java etc but I have yet to see what the extra cruft adds to these languages. I don't really enjoy tracking down curly braces in heavily nested code.
Have you ever seen code that had stuff like this
in it.
}
}
Got Code?
Java the programming language is well-defined and documented and anyone can write their own compiler/interpreter for it, just as they would for Pascal or BASIC or Lisp.
Java the class libraries are, in my opinion, one of the reasons for the success of Java. They are (for the most part) well thought-out and provide a lot of useful functionality (e.g., network, GUI, data structures) for developers that enables focusing on solving problems instead of doing basic stuff over and over. This is exactly the same type of thing that helped C take off in the 1970s with the standard Unix libraries and why CPAN exists for Perl. These libraries could be replaced and/or clean-room implementations created, which is indeed happening.
The Java virtual machine is the component Sun has been controlling, for good reason. The JVM is what provides the cross-platform execution and consistent behavior. It also defines a lot of Java features that go beyond the language specification such as runtime class loading and heap management. These are powerful aspects of Java and to have inconsistent behavior would be nightmarish for developers (and was, early on).
IBM and Apple are two companies that have developed their own JVMs that behave consistently with Sun's but are not written by Sun. IBM even has an open source JVM separate from their licensed one. There are other JVM projects in existence, at different stages of maturity.
I agree completely that too many major companies have too much invested in Java to let Sun just nuke it or hose it over. Java is in a much more stable state than C#/.NET. Microsoft could announce tomorrow ".NET XP" which could be 180 degrees different from what is today, whereas Sun can't arbitrarily change the fundamentals of Java without losing a lot of support from the major players and individual developers who make Java successful.
IBM would have to dust off something to use in place of Java....
Blar.
They can buy Java, then replace the libraries with .NET. Then, the syntax will be java, but the functionality will be Windows only. Not it that would happen overnight, but it is a usual tactic of Microsoft anyway.
I think my heart has always been with RMS's free software ideals, despite the fact that probably 90% of the software is use is proprietary. One thing that just hit me, though, is that RMS seems to arbitrarily draw the line at software. To me, I always thought the principal of free software was one of control: that users knew what was going on inside the programs they were running and had the power to change them however they saw fit. Yet to me, this concept of control goes beyond just the software and extends down to the hardware, which has been and probably always will be proprietary. I think there are certain low-level areas where hardware and software can trade functionality and the line between them isn't so clear.
Do we forget about hardware because it is, by theoretical model, the same from machine to machine? Or has it never been the case that hardware has been a limiting factor for users? Or do we just concede that we probably don't have very little power over the hardware in the first place? If anybody is more familiar with this topic, please let me know.
Rational now will have to deal with Whitehorse and their sales will go south in the Windows market until corporations get a chance to compare it to Rational products. If Whitehorse becomes part of the MSDN subscription (and it will) then who is Rational going to sell to? Visio may have sucked enough to keep .NET developers buying Rational tools, but Whitehorse wont, and IBM will be stuck with another LOTUS. Great technology with too small a market for profitability.
Careful -- that's the free software community you're talking about.
The open source idea does have some interesting possibilities, and while I'm not as fanatical about it as some, I'm certainly prepared to give it a shot if the opportunity arises.
The free software idea has pretty much no demonstrated benefits, other than those that come with open source anyway. It's a philosophical movement, with whose philosophy I happen to disagree. That's mainly because my employer makes money from selling good products, significantly ahead of the nearest competition due to investing in good staff who work hard. While that business model seems entirely ethical to me, it would be destroyed instantly by making everything free-as-in-FSF.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Seems to me that if Sun were to dual-license Java the way Trolltech did with QT, they'd make a pile of money. GPL plus commercial license if you don't want to GPL your own stuff. Turn Java into a megastandard and still make money from commercial users...what's to lose?
I am a computer science student and I'm very envolved with the academic activities on my university. I have a scientific initiation* project based on testing mobile agents build in Java. The project is even afforded by a gov. agency.
..."
We are using Sun's JVM and compilers to build the agents and the testers. I was think about using gcj/classpath to build that programs, but that would be really 'reliable' ?
How my project would be intepreted in scientific congress when people see it is not developed under Sun's JVM but on GNU's one ?
I have always fought for freedom and I totally agree with almost all Stalman's words but to say us to use a free replacement for Sun's JVM that isn't even completely done doesn't sound very pleasant for the programmers. In my case, I don't know what would be the academic's or even my advisor's reaction to a sentence like: "This Java program, compiled under GNU's JVM, solves that and that problem this way
Before trying to "push" (don't take me as non-free person) a environment it is better to finish it don't you think ?
* that's how it is called the first project the student have in the academic environment in Brazil
It's a serious question. To paraphrase myself:
I've programmed Java J2EE for years. I am expert at the "best practices", performance tweaks, and real production-quality code, yet Java's utility is almost nonexistent beyond "it's what I [was] paid to write." Here is MY short list of things Java is useful for:
1) HUGE web sites. J2EE is a good solution: strong typing in the language, a security model that is complete from the database backend up to the Struts frontend, and clustering/failover with EJB 2.0.
COROLLARY: Small-medium sites should use LAMP and rely on redundant hardware to handle failover.
2) Applets. Since they run on "most" Unixes + Windows browsers, and despite the load time an applet is much friendlier to users than Flash. But you have to use Java 1.1 to ensure compatibility.
COROLLARY: Cross-platforms GUIs should use Python, Qt, wxWindows, Tcl/Tk, etc.
3) Unusual database applications for which only an ODBC or JDBC driver exists. JDBC is a rather mature standard (should be since it ripped off ODBC) that works pretty well. It's faster to write a few quick Statements and PreparedStatements and run them against a database than to use native tools that "have" 'different' ''ways'' of quoting strings.
COROLLARY: Prefer Perl or PHP if the database is supported.
4) Any application for which speed is not an issue. Yeah, Java can do everything any other language can do, and if this is the one easiest for someone to "think in" then they should use it.
COROLLARY: NEVER use Java to create or manipulate graphics from the command line. No JDK, EVER, has managed to do this despite five years of pleading from the professional programmers. Without a GUI Java goes belly-up on the first "new java.awt.Frame()". (And for you 1.4+ folks who think HeadlessException was a fine solution, it wasn't.)
Java was a great idea in 1995, but since then Java has been pushed as the Second Coming and it just hasn't measured up. The other languages have surpassed Java in every one of its primary marketing points: platform independence, performance, object-orientedness, ease of use.
So what jobs are you doing that make Java the best solution?
Not trying to flame, but genuinely curious.
FYI Blackdown, IBM et al CAN'T fork the Sun JDK unless Sun frees the code. And, as apparently thousands of Slashdotters are unaware, every other JDK except Kaffe+GNU is an independently licensed derivative of Sun's JDK.
Oh, you mean like Google, Yahoo, Industrial Light and Magic, Disney, Thawte, RealNetworks, and IBM? Yeah, they'd never use python. No, wait, they DO use python. Not to mention NASA, the National Weather Service, MCI Worldcom, and numberous others.
And it's spelled "python", dumbass.
Java is a weapon of mass Construction.
The real problem here is that the community in general has forgotten what a business is all about. Even my business. To make money. And when the squeeze comes on the primary lines of income (as it always does), the "charity" gets "changed" in ways the community does not approve of.
It is the same reason I will not produce serious applications in .net. I have used it, it is neat, but it is locked up and problematic. If MS wants to make a change that breaks my code, my clients are in trouble. If you think they will not, go back to VB, VC++ et al. MS always makes changes that breaks things, and then they do force the change on you.
Sun is yet another company that has tried to be a gallant knight in shining armor (all in the name of profit). If Sun kills Java for a few billion, what can we say? They own it. If Sun decides to let it go free, what can MS say? No payment?
If we as a community really want to keep Sun's Java alive (not our Java), then we need to make it worth Sun's while to do so. Sun needs to turn a profit. Without that profit, they can not pay the people who write Java to write. Without a profit, there is no gatekeeper.
If we all really want to keep Java, we need to reach into our pockets and pull out some money. If everyone contributed $100.00US to a fund (say the OSDN) earmarked to purchase Java and set it free (or to pay sun to keep it going), you might get what you need. You need to get 10,000,000 people to each pay their $100.00US to the fund (1 billion dollars US). Now, that is only half what the MS people are paying for whatever it is they are paying for, so we all might need to pay more than $200.00 each.
Of course, you could always try to get a few thousand serious developers to start contributing to the development of Java in the wild.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Can't make apps for other OS'es .NET app, but what if a Windows 98 person doesnt have the framework installed?
.. doesnt work!
I just use my own XML/XSLT instead ...
:(
... too ugly methinks ..
/. cos if this was angrycoder I would get boo-ed just for mentioning Windows 98!!! (but not their latest stuff)
And I never compiled a
Also web-forms are crap - stay well clear of them!
Try and rendering a calendar control on a NETSCAPE hehe
I program in C# but really dont like it
It's just ahm
(still searching for a better language - shame couldn't get Eiffel.NET to work)
PS: I am glad this is
Apache licenses are, IIRC, precisely the type of free software you mention. I believe, too, the BSD license terms are the same (tho I can't back that up, so I guess it's just hearsay :-)).
As this thread progresses, I'm certain we'll find that a lot of people whine about and take cheap shots at RMS. Coincidentally, these are typically people who haven't accomplished anything useful in their entire lives except post witty one-liners and flames of others here on Slashdot. RMS' legacy is the GPL and a fast-growing freedom movement, mine is having Excellent Karma on a News for Nerds site.
RMS actually tries to protect our freedoms, which is more than I can say for 99% of us, including myself. We mostly seem to care about what's the best DRM or how easily we can adapt to the corporations' new demands on us. We act like a slave nation. I remember reading a book about slavery in the Old South, and the amazing thing was that many slaves believed that slavery was ethical because they had been taught that they were an inferior people, and that the white overlords were justified in beating wayward slaves because it was their plantations and their profitability that would suffer from lazy slaves. The masters managed to get the slaves to see it from their perspective, and in the process, to forget the reality that was their own perspective. We are the same. This is fast becoming our way of thinking. We're not looking out to protect ourselves, but to be "fair" to the companies we have to deal with. The RIAA cries about lost sales. Software companies cry about free alternatives or piracy. Pretty much everyone cries about people making products similar to what they've already released, even though their design was just common sense. And we hear their cries, and often feel bad for the poor Multinationals whose sales are down 7%, leaving them with a meagre profit of about 5 billion dollars (after hiding some with crooked accounting, of course). Needless to say, the companies don't have this self-doubt and ethical dilemma. If they can get us to cave in and start down that "slippery slope of compromise" at all, they can continually and slowly take our consumer rights from us. Look at fair use, already on its deathbed. Timeshifting, which will soon be legislated to death. Copying, sharing, tinkering; all dying. Public domain vs. copyright.There's even crazy talk about the US outlawing free software. The balances are shifting hard and fast in favor of the corporations and against consumer rights. We the people generally have no ethical problem with proprietary software, spyware, or restrictions on our freedom as long as it is inobtrusive. Because we have bought the line that we don't OWN anything. We're only LICENSING our possessions AT THE SAME PRICE AS WE USED TO BUY THEM FOR. Pretty soon, we'll only be able to license our computer hardware. Since we won't own it, we will have NO legal right to privacy on it. And you know what? Give us a better media player or smoother GUI and we'll line up for it like lemmings.
We tend to begin from the assumption that the corporations are right and ethical in their thinking. They spend massive advertising dollars to promote their claim that they occupy the moral high ground. This is often incorrect. We should always begin by doubting every position, but especially the status quo. I got a chance to talk to a few fairly famous musicians at Juno afterparties a few years ago, and yes, they were all thankful that the record companies supported them, but at the same time agreed that they were taking too big of a cut, had too much artistic control, and that the RIAA-type organizations were all crooked and greedy as hell. Some of the artists WANTED to put free songs online to get their names out or to reward faithful fans, but they were forbidden by their corporate masters. They aren't even allowed to play guitar and sing around a campfire without the Company's permission. So whose ethical viewpoint should we be listening to -- the artists themselves, or the middleman who packages the artists music? In a digital age, why are these middlemen even still around? If we keep them around and move to the digital download model, we've just added another layer of middlemen (Apple, Nap
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Java runs on mainframes. How do you propose to have a "cross-platform UI" which works on IBM, Tandem, AND a PC?
That work well for Mr James on NewsRadio:
...Glorious sunset of my heart was fading. Soon the super karate monkey death car would park in my space. But Jimmy has fancy plans... and pants to match. The monkey clown horrible karate round and yummy like cute small baby chick would beat the donkey.
Mr. James: "The original title of this book was 'Jimmy James, Capitalist Lion Tamer' but I see now that it's... 'Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler'... you know what it is... I had the book translated in to Japanese then back in again into English. Macho Business Donkey Wrestler... well there you go... it's got kind of a ring to it don't it? Anyway, I wanted to read from chapter three... which is the story of my first rise to financial prominence... I had a small house of brokerage on Wall Street... many days no business come to my hut... my hut... but Jimmy has fear? A thousand times no. I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey strong bowels were girded with strength like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo... dung.
If Sun had GPL'd Java early on, there would be no .NET today. There would be no need, as Java would have become the de-facto language for Windows applications and Microsoft would have been forced to go along. Java would benefit from Microsoft's strength in Dev-tools, and anything good that Microsoft came up with would have been shared across platforms.
Sun expected Java to do for them what Visual Basic did for Microsoft, but they were stupid about it. When Visual Basic came out, Microsoft created a huge market for tools vendors like Roguewave and others without giving them a rectal exam everytime they came up with something to keep them under their thumb. Sun could have done the same thing, allowing people to create Solaris widgets and stuff, but Sun should have had a decent IDE available at the time of Java's initial release for all this aftermarket stuff to fold into.
Sun thought that good press equaled big money, and they did not listen to anyone about how to build a market. People took Java and left Sun behind.
uh...Hitler wasn't the reason we went to war.
What really pisses me off about the language is that companies buy into the hype that once you convert to Java your programmers will shit flowers and pie and you'll never have bad code problems again. I have seen first hand that that's bullshit! Java isn't a silver bullet. You can't go hire a bunch of chimpanzees just because you switch to Java.
Oh, and that "write once run anywhere" is not really saying enough. It should say "Write once run anywhere you have a nominally compatable jvm, keeping in mind that behavior may be unpredictable or downright incorrect if said JVM is off by one minor dot-release or was implemented by a different company." I've had more problems switching between minor versions of JVMs than I have switching between major versions or even brands of C and C++ compilers (With the major exception of the HPUX standard C library.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
I first heard it refering to the economists of the 50s and 60s (Put 4 economists in a room and you'll get 5 different answers)
No one will get that joke, although everyone here comments on Java, no one here actually programs in it.
You have not given your exact UI requirements. I do not excpect a single UI to meet all possible UI requirements, but I think a variety of simple, efficient UIs can run reasonably across these platforms, and where any such free UI is successful at addressing a new reasonably-popular set of requirements, it deserves inclusion in the free Java platforms people most people download.
Innovation and the correct balance will never occur through monopoly control of the environment. We waited many years since before jdk 1.0 to get simple awt font commands that worked the same on PC and Mac, and Sun never fixed it, even though we were licensees, and Sun has not gotten more responsive since then. A dictatorship they are, but benevolent only to those who have no urgent real-world requirements.
I said C# rocks. If you develop Windows applications, there is nothing better. Before, the choice was to use C++ and take a long amount of time, or use VB and get crap out the door quickly. C# (and VB.NET) lets Windows developers avoid the pitfalls of VB and the complexity of C++. Does that rock enough for you?
And show me anything, anywhere that matches MSDN as a developer resource for any platform. I dont particpate in religious wars about whether Java or C# is the better language anymore. I'm just glad that I something other than Java for Windows development.
GNU, Linux, BSD, Java, etc. are not free. It all depends on what free means.
For commercial application, it could have problem with GNU, because that would limit them the ability to change their app without showing up some of their interlectual properly, that's some high price to pay. It also may limit them to use some other's pattern with GNU software.
Whan talking like an extremist and anarchy like RSM, it's to the extreme that everything you runs must be free for your app to be free.
BUT WHO CARES?
Until recently, most app are not opened, and people still lives, computer stills show up, and businesses still thrive. So things does not have to be totally free like the extremist said.
Then, the hardware also have to be free to RSM. Does that mean I have to be able to fabricate my CPU and what not to run my app? Silly to call it a must. (it's nice though).
So nothing will be completely free.
This is why we need democratic. It allows company to thrive, create application that runs and sell them, and then there are customers who find them benefitial, and finding the company's behavior's about supporting customer and the rapport build up, then they buy their product, although it does have to be free.
As a Java developer myself, I am happy with Sun's so far all these years for what they doing, knowing not all stuffs provided by Sun are free.
You can preach all you can, but you can also get a life.
uh...Hitler wasn't the reason we went to war.
Yes, that hitler excuse was made up by the illumanati to distract us from the fact that planet x is coming back.
A red-hat based distro can last a long time provided you use somewhat more sophisticated tools to manage it. Suggestion: apt-rpm.
I don't know what those other problems you speak of stem from, for I have many RedHat boxes and have not experienced them. Perhaps the admins are idiots?
A Solaris box is also difficult to work with on the first go-round. Usually you get sent to Sun classes and everything becomes clear.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
A paragraph like this makes it hard to take "Where is Java in the settlement?" seriously.
Apple's JVM is a modified Sun JVM and Apple has contributed enhancements back to Sun.
Apple killed the clones because they were not expanding the Macintosh market (they were eating Apple's share).
Let's face it, none of the CPUs used in common Unix-specific systems (PowerPC, UltraSPARC, Itanium, SHA-x) are close to RISC. All of them have relatively deep pipelines, interlocking stages and some form of microcode. Only the MIPS processors can be considered close, but still, nothing like the original RISC ideals.
(The other way you can express this is few chips are really CISC either. x86s aren't CISC, they're just Gimp-IA'd)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
"As this thread progresses, I'm certain we'll find that a lot of people whine about and take cheap shots at RMS. Coincidentally, these are typically people who haven't accomplished anything useful in their entire lives except post witty one-liners and flames of others here on Slashdot."
It's a pity that you started a long comment with a ad hominem argument. The fact is that the validity of RMS's arguments or those of his critics have nothing to do with what they have or have not accomplished. Let the arguments stand on their own.
Perhaps you should become more familiar with what RMS says and realize that the major underlying justification of the free software movement is its ethical basis; the main questions for a social movement (such as the free software movement) address what kind of world we want to live in and how we should treat each other. I can think of no way to answer that question that forgoes an examination of one's ethics.
This is not "blather" as you so discourteously put it, nor is your response insightful (as some moderators have apparently chosen to say). Questions of ethics are some of the most important questions in society. I think your objection to the matter says more about you than about RMS or his way of conveying the importance of software freedom.
Digital Citizen
Until you can spell Python correctly, you'd better stop pretending to know it...
David
Nadar, Dick Clarke, etc. want to have their cake and eat it too. They're both pretty good at predicting the past, but useless at predicting the future.
However I think the aforemetioned focus too much about software. Software isn't everything, at least last time I checked ? To illustrate my point I will give this questions to the three lettered leaders and all you other OSS ethusiasts.
Do you grow your own foods, and i mean all of them ?
Do you weave and grow your flax, and such for fabrics that you wear ? again all the clothes you wear ?
I am gonna guess that the answer is definte NO for both. Since 1 it takes entirely too much time to do either along with other responsibilities most people have. Secondly it is just easier to put that responsibility on a company that makes it convient in the form of mega superstores/grocery marts. If we all had to make our own clothes, and grow our own food we would not have much time to move forward and create other things to push our social quo to the next level. Same thing with hardware and software we should excerise balance free software as well non-free software competing for the next big thing. Not everyone wants to control the innerworkings of their OS, and or low-level device drivers just so they can type. No most people opt for Mircosoft/Apple/*nix vendors to do that for them so that the user can do something with and possibly make something else to work with it and make thiers as well as others lives a bit easier for them, and the cycle continues.
I enjoy free/open software however some software i would just rather pay for or get the binary and be done with and not have to try and compile it and trudge through any library hell that might incurr. My time is better spent doing things i do better, and in other ways enjoy more. I think free software needs the proprietary software to keep the value of what software is in perspective, since software seems to be ever more expensive as the years pass-on.
So to re-iterate keep things in balance and the path should be clear because extremists on any topic are rarely 100% correct.
yeah, if you use Phython you're probably phucked. if you use Python on the other hand...
No, Sun has (in my paranoid opinion) agreed to kill Java and probably StarOffice as well.
What on earth are you basing this on? Sun settles a lawsuit and signs a patent crosslicensing agreement, and all of a sudden we have people hypothesizing Sun agreed under-the-table to drop their only interesting or promising products in exchange for a measly two billion? Why not just go all out and suggest that Microsoft had Scott McNealy quietly killed six months ago and replaced with an actor hired to impersonate him while running the company into the ground, and Sun will soon be sending out squads of mercenaries to kill Linux users on sight?
These threads continue to baffle me.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Those are all good points. However, let's broaden them. For example, let's look at the word "gay anal rape". What is it, is it good or is it whack? Let's be honest, it's really just an "infringement" of another man's ass, no worse than a parking ticket. Backdoor loving wants to be free!
Part of the problem, is that in 7 years of programming in Java, I've never seen an EXCELLENT Java book. (I'd rate a few as good, mind you, but not enough to quickly cover all the bases of what learned from experience and Javadocs)
The churn of crappy books however, is immense.
Give it 6 months for 1.5 to stop being beta and with the wave of authors touting how to redo everthing in Java 1.5--you'll see a good 1/2 to full rack. Big Changes in the language itself--not just the libraries and so much room for people to update the crapload of fluff they've already written.
The key difference between a Programmer and a Senior Programmer is that one of them is Mexican.
We went to war because we were attacked by Japan. Did you learn about Pearl Harbor?
I don't know about the rest of his article -- seems ok to me -- but his memories about Bill's "investment" in Apple are rather flawed:
1) Apple did not abandon their Java compliance projects. Today, they are arguably among the best Java development and deployment platforms out there.
2) It is hard to say Apple used the $150M to kill the clones. They had already been killed by the time Steve and Bill got together.
My recollection of the event was that the big thing that Apple got was an endorsement from Microsoft, a notion that Apple wasn't going to die in the next few weeks.
I've been watching the paranoia around the Sun/MS deal for some considerable time and I just don't get it. This is a huge good deal for Sun. There is no conspiracy here and nothing to be concerned about.
.NET and the CLR.
.NET developers do over .NET. Come to think of it Java developers have more influence over .NET then .NET developers do. In the end Sun may well go under in which case IBM, BEA, Oralce, Nokia, or some other company with a major vested interest in Java will buy them out. It might be Microsoft I suppose, but it seems very unlikely to me.
What could Sun achieve by proceeding with its 2002 lawsuit? The lawsuit asked for $1 billion in damages; the settlement yields Sun $700 million for antitrust issues - less than what it wanted - and a further $1,250 million covering patent royalties - which is more than what it wanted. The only reason for continuing to persue the legal case would be on a point of principle. Sun can't afford this at the moment. The fact is that the EU ruling was a watershed - Sun can't hope for any more out of MS at this time. And Microsoft is doubtless hoping that by paying out it will derail the EU ruling. I doubt there is any more to this then that - Microsoft knew it would loose in the end, and litigation is bad for any company, but particularly one that is in the throws of taking on the EU. Sun has principles, which is nice, but can no longer afford them. The idea that Sun would cease development on Java (its most important product of the last few years, central to its Linux strategy going forward and worth a not inconsiderable amount of money (50 million USD from Nokia alone)) is as daft as imaging MS will now cease work on
As for the rest of the debate Java is in pretty good hands at the moment - Java developers have way more influence over it then
Amen!
I don't know, you can imagine quite a bit.
From Stallman's article..
> If you develop a Java program on Sun's Java
> platform, you are liable to use Sun-only features
> without even noticing. By the time you find this
> out, you may have been using them for months, and
> redoing the work could take more months.
You could say the same thing for GCC.
It's possible you link to a proprietary library without noticing. It's the same with any development platform. Does this mean you should avoid using the GNU compiler?
The reality is that standard Java is so feature-rich and there are so many open-source libraries and frameworks around you very rarely (if ever) need to resort to using proprietary libraries (Sun or not).
Does your electricity provider make you agree to use the electricity you generate in only "approved" ways?
Does the hardware manufacturer do the same?
If they did, I wouldn't see a "electricity trap" or "hardware trap" warning as out of line.
I did not mean that Apple's was independent of Sun, just that Apple is the one who makes it for their platform. Same with IBM's main JVM. They both have a lot invested in keeping Java stable.
But IBM also has the Jikes RVM, which is an open source Java virtual machine. It is separate from the Sun-based JVM that IBM makes.
...and I'd say your post validates my point, more than anything. What I'm talking about is the visual structure of code, which communicates information about the code's meaning. The appearance of the page, from a "right brain", artistic point of view. Imagine how your code might look like, to someone who was only able to read Chinese.
Perl has this in spades, and no accident, Larry Wall built it that way quite deliberately. In my experience, java has about as much as perl, C has slightly less (due to its comparatively minimalist syntax), and lisp has hardly any at all - it's just words and brackets.
Sure you can indent lisp and color it, but you can do that in java and perl, too. It doesn't close the gap.
Any decent Java IDE/editor should have matching bracket highlighting, wich alleviates that problem (unless you have really long/deeply nested methods).
If only I could come up with a good sig
No matter what the argument, having INVISIBLE characters of indeterminate size be syntax significant seems too rigid for my taste.
Hear, hear! Spot on.
Recommendation: "Thinking In Java" by Bruce Eckel. Available for download at Mr. Eckel's website, http://www.bruceeckel.com ...
Let the arguments stand on their own.
Good point. Even the biggest troll on Slashdot occasionally has something good to say... however, I find it pretty disgusting that people I can only consider worthless lazyass losers (that's the Republican in me speaking here) try to character assassinate RMS in every thread. True, they do it to Bill Gates regularly, Steve Jobs often, but RMS *ALWAYS*. Masses of AC's belittle his accomplishments, insult his appearance and attack his insistence that the GNU (freedom aspect) of Linux distros be mentioned lest it be forgotten.
What I'm saying is that the posts are not usually arguments against his principles of freedom, but at best are instructions telling him how to do his job and what he needs to change to be acceptable to the moderate masses (as if he was a servant of ACs everywhere), and at worst, personal attacks that try to destroy his reputation or mock him and his ethics.
North America is f**ked. We need all the ethics we can get, and all the ethical people we can get. With the massive quantities of (what I consider to be) lies coming from the media, corporate PR firms, and politicians recently, I am forced to check my sources as well as the information they present. So if Miguel de Icaza talks about the GPL's effects on his work, I am more likely to believe him than a judgemental AC who begins by calling RMS a dirty Gnu-hippie. And if Miguel DOES write a post about the GPL, he is far more likely to post logical reasons or facts. The quality of the AC posts is just that -- AC quality.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
From RMS's article:
If your program is free software, it is basically ethical
RMS should stop insinuating that commercial / non-free software may be un-ethical.
The ethics of software are not for RMS to decide.
Silence, you fool! The success of the mercenary plan depends on operational secrecy! And, that's not an actor, it's an android. Sheesh, get with the program...
We went to war because we were attacked by Japan. Did you learn about Pearl Harbor?
regardless of Pearl Harbor the US was going to enter WW2. do you forget that Germany attacked US Vessels carrying private citizens before Pearl Harbor even happened? FDR was looking for any reason to go after the Germans. After Germany, Italy and Japan signed an agreement to all go to war together against common enemies the US knew they had to be involved. Maybe you should read YOUR history books.
Java Rules.
Why not just go all out and suggest that Microsoft had Scott McNealy quietly killed six months ago and replaced with an actor hired to impersonate him while running the company into the ground, and Sun will soon be sending out squads of mercenaries to kill Linux users on sight?
Damn. They figured it out.
-Bill Gates
According to Netcraft Kombat's site (www.kombat.org) is running Apache on Linux.
Yup, it probably is. I don't host my own website. What, you think I've got a closet of rackmounted blade servers at home, with dedicated net access, to host my piddly little personal website?
I pay $10 a month for BlueGenesis to host my website. Sorry to spoil your fun.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
this slashdot discussion is evidence to me that a lot of slashdot commentators live in some fantasyland unconnected with reality.
.net are not dead and will not be for the next 10 years. There is too much invested capital in both these products.
java and
apt for rpm is NO DIFFERENT than apt tooled for pkg. Moreover, with apt on RPM based systems I have a choice of (well last time I modifed sources.list) 8 different repositories for my package sources (source + binary) with various different political bents and countries of origin, so I get EVERYTHING. ::glee!!!::
/etc/sysconfig and the like. Also the installer and hardware detection is _tight_. (cliche, but 100% true). The only thing that still rubs me the wrong way is trying to patch kernel source RPMs, but that's getting easier (and you can always do it manually from source without ill effect).
You've obviously never used RedHat long enough to appreciate it. You get used to the layout of
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
McNealy doesn't need to be an actor OR an android to be an idiot CEO who makes random decisions.
Nothing would surprise me coming from him. He's the Darl McBride of UNIX.
Oh, wait...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
It raises the question, ignoramus.
Yes, syntax is important. But although it's the most obvious aspect of any language, in many ways it's the least important. Far more important are the semantics: what that code means. C and Java, for example, differ far more than just in a few operators and keywords. There's the type system. The memory model. The thread model. The namespaces. The execution environment. The standard library (which is a whole subclass of aspects in itself). The expression evaluation. The error and exception handling. The preprocessor. The object model. And so on.
Just as there's far more to learning English than memorising some spellings, there's far more to learning a computer language than memorising its syntax (something a good number of books would do well to learn!).
So don't lump all ALGOL-based languages together; they differ greatly. If you mean to compare procedural languages against other paradigms (which is something else), then say so.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
I really appreciate the new introduced use RMS gave the 'Free World' term.
--My regards to the last of the hackers!
> Unless we want every corporation to get the
> control over us the RIAA has, we need to draw a
> line in the sand. But most of us don't give a
> damn.
Sun isn't the RIAA.
You seem to be aligning the 'Free' Software movement with the movement against Corporate control of our lives. Is this really valid?
If you want to align this debate with another - then maybe a more appropriate on is debate about unborn children. Most people are not completely pro-choice or pro-life, they recognise there is a middle ground balance between the rights of the child and the rights of the parents. The FSF reminds me of the rabid pro-lifers. The line in the sand you're trying to draw it not realistic or ethical.
I think there is a emerging concensus that the most 'ethical' software license tries to find a balance between protecting the rights of the producers of software to protect and gain the benefits of their work (without being ripped off) and the rights of the consumer to use software in as many ways as possible (including using it in proprietary systems).
The balance of power has shifted too far towards the producers of software but that doesn't mean the other extreme is the best route to follow.
> We're like the drowning person who flails at his
> rescuer. And until someone else steps up to
> carry the torch, RMS is our rescuer. RMS is the
> King.
It's this sort of ideological cult-of-personality stuff just puts people off the FSF.
"...If Sun killed Java, IBM would probably just release their own Java. Legaly something new, but technically the same..."
Posting AC for obvious reasons, I don't find this very comforting, speaking as a guy who works for a company which has bet the farm on Java & Sparc architecture: We get quite enough trouble with minor releases from Sun, without switching to another provider, thank you very much...
Microsoft had Scott McNealy quietly killed six months ago and replaced with an actor hired to impersonate him while running the company into the ground
Well, that was the best explanation of Suns's actions I've heard to this date.
Cheers,
Head first Java is the best Java book ever.
C is a bit of a straw man, really. Nobody uses it anymore for any reason but three: you can compile it anywhere, you can call it from anything, and you can bit-bash without the language getting underfoot. Performance wise, there's really no difference between C, C++, Ocaml, Ada...
If you want a non-straw-man, consider comparing to java. A very "imperative" design, but with fairly heavy bug protection, and capable of much abstraction.
This all reminds me a bit of the mid-1990's when people were first dabbling in using NT for technical applications (you know, where calculations had to be accurate beyond two places to the right of the decimal...) There was some ballyhoo about Intergraph's Advanced Processor Division (later generations of the Fairchild Clipper) becoming part of Sun. Supposedly, several significant design features of what was originally to have been the C500 were to be folded into the UltraSPARC--most notably a "byte-sex" switch. By being able to run in "little-endian" mode, the next generation of Sun machines woud be able to join the MIPS/SGI, IBM PowerPC and Alpha as alternate platforms for NT.
It took about a year before Howard Sachs and his people were either laid off or assimilated into other Sun projects (the buzz was that it was mostly the former), Sun and Microsoft had re-affirmed their mutual hatred, and any whiff of a prospect of Windows running on a Sun-designed processor was eradicated. Intergraph in the meantime jumped into bed with Redmond (and almist perished) as one of the earliest adoptors of WinTel for technical applications, but at the same time sat on its remaining design patents and nailed Intel for infringement some years later.
2. RedHat !f= (doesn't fucking equal) *nix on x86.
3. WTF does Apache have to do with ANYTHING? Apache is Apache, it's the same Apache whether running on an x86 *nix or a "Unix Machine".
4. I have never seen a *nix without a large number of startup / shutdown / whatever scripts, and I have yet to see any major headaches from toying with them, anywhere, ever, on any *nix. Why on earth is this non-existent "x86 *nix" problem not also a problem on "Unix Machines" that also have lots of scripts?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Interestingly, one of the founders of OMS, Clemens Szyperski, recently went to work for Microsoft Research.
How is unethical to want to get paid for your work?
RMS has never said it is unethical to want to get paid for your work. But if it is OK to want to get paid for your work, it does not follow that it is OK to impose restrictions on what people can do with software that you write. I think it's pretty obvious that the one does not follow from the other.
What is the free software movement if not precisely a movement of people who do not want restrictions imposed on how they use their computers or the software on them? The free software movement is a movement of people who want to use software only if that software does not put restrictions on how they use it. These people want to "live [compute] in freedom", to quote RMS from the article. They believe that the restrictions you find in non-free software that are unethical!
RMS's "dogma" does not taint the free software movement, it is the basis of that movement. (That doesn't mean it is the basis of the Open Source Movement, or that everyone who uses Linux agrees with everything RMS says, or many other things. It means the pursuit of free software is essential to the free software movement, so that to remove that would be to eliminate the movement.)
To the extent that you don't care whether the software you use is free of restrictions, you are not a supporter of the free software movement. To the extent that you want software you provide to others to be non-free, you are an enemy of the free software movement.
The ideals of the free software movement and getting paid to write software are entirely compatible, just not necessarily in the way that you might think.
And then how do you classify x86_64? Itanium?
;-D
I think you should just specify the platform. They (being those "other guys") only in it together against Intel x86. But if you want to argue platform features you have to be more specific than RISC (or "not x86") because they are not all created equal.
Specifically Intel's own new baby (Itanium2) probably has them panting and wheezing, with Power close behind. So... I don't know.
And all of them run Java slowly.
I have a scary notion that a port of Mono would be end up working better on Unix/XYZ compared to Wintel.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
java ~2200
c# ~550
4 to 1 in favor of java.
But, what will it be like next year?
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
RMS's use of the word "free" is precise and accurate.
Your definition of "free" is Orweillian and defeatist, and an attempt to lump together such clearly different concepts is little better than FUD.
Quote (emphasis mine):
I strongly suspect that there are hordes of MS employees all over the world with strict instructions to haunt slashdot and other places that permit anonnymous posting to constantly FUD RMS and the GNU position.And for those sites that don't permit AC type posts, there's always the handy yahoo/hotmail type throwaway account for this purpose.
there also appears to be a lot of pro-ms karma whoring going on with accounts building up karma to get moderator points to then mod up pro-ms posts.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Yes, everyone who works with computers for a living is an idiot. I should know, I have been doing it for over 20 years.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
This recent Sun/Microsoft grossness highlights the need for the Parrot VM. Parrot will act as a backend for the next Perl, but also Python, Ruby, Scheme and other dynamically typed languages.
Obviously this is useful for someone who does a lot of coding in one of these languages. But it has more important implications for the free/open software community and software more broadly, in that it offers a fast, multilanguage runtime that is unencumbered IP-wise and not bound by C-like syntax.
It is important because scripting-language developers have historically been a backbone of free software; extending their reach extends the broader movement's reach and developer base. It is important in a technical sense because many of these languages (esp. Python and Ruby) offer improvements over Algolish syntax. It is important because an on-time Parrot implementation could provide the new Gnome language (in Python, Ruby, what have you). Parrot will give us a platform for fast, portable free/open (and also proprietary) software development that comes out of free/open software.
http://www.parrotcode.org
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
atrocious speed
Previously Submitted language comparison puts java ahead of all other languages for business based applications. (When ignoring results for 64bit trigonometry...not often used in business apps).
And swing is only slow when coded badly. When programmed well, and mastered, it is just as rapid as native guis, and significantly more maintainable than MFC coded gui apps.
no, really? He wants us to all write for Qt rather than Java?
I'll write for something other than Java when I find something that works better cross-platform than Swing *and* has a good OO programming model *and* good database access and XML support. Until then, what's he asking, again?
Hi all, I heard that actualy Jonathan Schwartz has convinced Scott to turn sun into a software only company. Well, if this is the case, somehow Java must stay. Anyone heard something like that?
Lotus is far from a dead weight for IBM. See, your personally not having seen Lotus around recently doesn't represent the whole world.
The Singapore government, for example, is completely on Lotus. The government issued a mandate a few years back to "standardize" their IT infrastructure. They chose Lotus. Today, all government organizations (such as ministries), statutory bodies (such as the housing/economic/trade/etc development boards), fully-government-funded institutions (such as schools and polytechnics) and many others are completely on Lotus. No Microsoft Exchange or other competitors. Some are deploying Active Directory Services in addition, but Lotus is the core platform.
Even though Singapore is geographically small, that's a pretty massive IT market. I would venture that Lotus similarly has clients worldwide.
I totally agree. I've noticed it too.
Astroturfing is a sign of both fear and corruption. Looks like proprietary software knows they're going to lose after all.
Whishfull thinking is believing that freedom will just magically come to people if they don't fight or push for it. I've seen alot of technologies come and go, alot of platforms come and go, and alot of people simply become obsolete because they simply didn't understand that freedom mattered. Sorry, but getting the mob behind one particular technology or platform isn't going to make it magically more suceptable to freedom.
Here, the end in itself is not Java nor to co-opt the masses, it is freedom from another attempt at control. After that, the rest will take care of itself, just as it did with GNU/Linux.
Well, Akuzi, I'm afraid I must disagree.
It's obvious that the FSF would be the Pro-Choice side, not the Pro-Lifers. The corporate software people are the ones giving the little man restrictions on what they can and can't do with software. The FSF are the ones saying "do whatever you want, as long as you don't restrict other people's freedoms".
RMS is the king. Nobody else is looking out for me. The moderates sure aren't. You seem to be advocating the middle ground; a little DRM, a little spyware, a little loss of fair use rights, a little invasion of privacy... Ethics don't work like that. Ethics are immovable signposts. If they compromise, they will eventually disappear. Sure, you're being realistic, and if we could "theoretically" find a mid-point of control vs. freedom AND STAY THERE, that would be okay. But it won't happen. Take TODAY's example, the RIAA Easter Egg: once iTMS becomes successful, the RIAA starts planning to raise the prices. If you don't see the similarity and the anti-consumer trend with these events, you're not looking. There is NO safe way to make peace with these guys. Just like there is no safe way to make peace with Microsoft and rely on HOPE that they won't find a way to get their way entirely and destroy you. Because that's what they want -- their own way ENTIRELY. Whatever we surrender, we will NEVER get back. And they surrender nothing save what we FORCE them to surrender. They view any compromise as a FAILURE; we must as well if we are to succeed in keeping our freedoms intact. Because I guarantee you, if the big companies were able to take them all away and get away with it, they would.
And the "cult-of-personality" stuff hasn't really hurt Steve Jobs with the artsy Hollywood crew, or Bill Gates with the Suits, has it? I hear fame is just KILLING Donald Trump. As far as I can tell, the personal insults hurled at RMS are to PREVENT him from becoming a "cult-of-personality" icon, whereby he would become much more influential, and thus much more threatening to the status quo.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
A good language and a good programmer are expected to know the hardware, both specifically and in general. If you don't care about all that technical mumbo-jumbo, you will be at a marketing disadvantage in capability and efficiency. I agree that it is good for software architects to speak plainly, and at a humanly-understandable level, but please don't write the machine off as irrelevant.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
"Developers, developers, developers, developers..."
--JC
--JC
my comment wasn't wrong.
maybe you should read my history books too.
WWII was fought for completely different reasons.
"Nader's comments" don't apply.
And I sure as hell trust Theodore Nelson a lot more that I do some anonymous slashdot jerk.
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
Who else here was bored with Stallman's article after the third or fourth paragraph?
If a developer does not take the time to read the licensing agreements that SUN provides, than whines later on they have zero pity from me.
If GNU wants to sell the notion of Freedom-their notion of Freedom since discussing Love, Liberty, Life and Light is outside the scope of GNU-they'd better have a complete solution equal to SUN's Java before they discuss the limitations and traps of SUN's Java. Otherwise, it will fall on deaf ears.
With C or C++, we can point to ISO standards, tell people to code to that and file a bug against the compiler if it doesn't accept it. Sun could have gone the standards committee route. They could even have done for Java what the DoD did for Ada: make the standard open but keep the trademark, and you can only claim to have an Ada compiler if you pass the testsuite.
Perhaps we should coin a phrase "The Stallman Trap". In which we see a young developer interested in contributing to the community by distributing the source code to their new whizzo application.
But wait, somewhere down the line I link to a binary somewhere - whoops, that means it ain't really "free". Might as well not bother.... Goes off to play Unreal Tournament... (oh wait, that's not free either - what kind of a world is this!)
I admire what RMS is doing, but there's a point where it becomes to obsessional to be practically useful.
(I can hear the flames approaching...)
Sun will soon be sending out squads of mercenaries to kill Linux users on sight
:) Hey, it's one way to get more Solaris users, by percentage anyway.
I'm just thinking, that would make a great out-of-context quote.
Don't forget Sun's a fully paid-up SCO supporter -- i.e. oxygen for Darl's windmill-tilting crusade against Linux. If we managed to Googlebomb them as litigous bastards, maybe we'll be able to do it to them as squads of mercenaries...
(By the way, that page links to a lovely story containing the quote "I have a hard time seeing the Linux Zealots as any different from terrorists because of the nature of their threats." Charming.)
deus does not exist but if he does
I would imagine that the majority (70% +) of systems running today, and even started today are completely (and deliberately) running on antiquainted and deprecated tools, and even using deprecated methodologies.
.Net for anything other than .aspx/C# mysql, where the client specified. And we are talking project sub 10k GBP.
.Net == VB + extras.
Why? Because of money, workforce, managerial traits and costs of moving entire systems (in terms of hardware and time to retrain 5000 staff)
Data is forever. Lets not forget how Java is opening up data standardisation. There are many governments that are taking a J2EE only stance right now for their software.
The Java market is maturing, the latest JVM's are great, I use IBM, Sun, anything that suits the purpose.
The database of communication between IBM and Sun when IBM wrote their own VM is no longer easily available, but there was more professional jestery than rivalry. I think IBM and Sun are closer than you would assume.
IBM feeds Java, Java is Sun's gift to Computer programmers. Sun created Java, and has yet to profit madly from it. Its own StarOffice is build on it, it gets money from certification, and people buy Java products (Applications Servers) for 10's 000's of dollars.
There is big money in Java, and Sun and IBM are both getting it, but Sun is really seeding many other third party companies, giving them a chance to make real money from Java, and give back to java. By sowing this foundation of companies that have a huge financial interest in Java, Sun has build a multi vendor dream world, yes this gives problems, but the same problems you could say would beset an operating system with 50 competeing distros, 2 major competing window environments etc etc.
Sun deliberately created this Java empire, and by creating the conditions it did, has single handedly hoisted Java to the #1 spot in desired skills.
Now I would also the quality of those jobs (in terms of project size) is a lot larger, as I would never use
For anything other than peanuts, J2EE is the only way to go.
For something that might need even a hint of updating after the first time it compiles, J2EE is the only way to go.
For something that you are seriously developing, for 1 year, with a team of 7 programmers, J2EE is the only way to go.
I love VB, it is such a clear example of Microsoft development, and
People develop in VB, and woe unto them, this proves that people develop in what makes them money, not what is the best tool.
It just happens that Sun held back on the reigns (or pulled them in) enough to allow for an environment where now the way to make money IS to use the best tool.
Why not to GPL Java? Lets see, why to GPL Java. I am not sure. I wouldn't want to GPL XHTML and have myXHTML, l33tXHTML, msXHTML (oh sorry, that one exists!) and the likes. Of course, the JCP is there to apply improvements to Java, and not libraries, but deep down JVM changes, IBM can happily run through this! JCP is a process that is working!
Java is not stagnant, it is evolving, and I give Sun credit to how they have handled it, given the preying eyes of M$ and others.
It must be like wandering through a mine field filled with M$ consultants trying to sell you electro-magnetic boots.
Or something similar.
Mod away.
A tip: try using StrictMath instead of Math.
my comment wasn't wrong. maybe you should read my history books too.
You said that we went to war because Japan attacked us, but there were many reasons we would have been involved anyway. Your comment was short sighted, and wrong.
WWII was fought for completely different reasons.
Some of which I listed.
"Nader's comments" don't apply.
Agreed, he is irrelevent. The funny part about his website is he doesn't even mention 9/11 or national security. The guy is a joke.
You did leave Hitler and "Tojo" alone... until Tojo bloodied your nose at pearl harbor.
Tempus fugit sub anesthesia.