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James Gosling On The Sun/Microsoft Settlement
greg_barton writes "James Gosling has responded to the two previous commentaries cited on Slashdot about the Java Dilemma. Some interesting excerpts: "In Rick Ross's 'Where Is Java In This Settlement?' he worries that Sun may have sold out the Java community. We didn't. We have not sold our soul to the Dark Side." and "There's a long thread of discussion on Slashdot 'Two Takes on the Java Dilemma' that is pretty entertaining, from a wow, what are they smoking! point of view. There are voices of reason, and conspiracy nuts.""
Not that there is anything particularly wrong with having a viewpoint that perhaps GPL-like freedom is not the most important thing to preserve in computing, but Gosling's personal attacks on RMS are a little over the top. He starts off by accusing RMS of redefining "Free" and then proceeds to deconstruct the entire concept of Software Freedom based on the hinge that RMS is essentially a kook.
I respect Gosling as a very intelligent programmer and language designer, but his willingness to engage in personal attacks against others in the Software Community makes me question his personal judgement.
Java does not need to be Free to be useful, but such can be said without resorting to deriding the entire Software Freedom movement, IMO.
I have been pwned because my
i'm going to 'have a little faith' and trust gosling and mcnealy. we haven't even seen what Sun's next move is yet hoards of /.'ers are freaking out. lets give these guys a chance before we dismiss them.
smd4985
Unlike GPLd software, the Java sources don't come with a viral infection clause that requires you to apply the GPL to your own code
Didn't sell your soul, huh?
Art doesn't obey the first law of thermodynamics either. Some people put their whole life, unrecognized, into creating art, and when they are long gone, their work is still with us. COMPENSATION and BUSINESS obey the 1st law of thermodynamics, but that is by no means the only driving force behind people.
People think with their feelings and not with their head. My favorite "conspiracy theory" is that Sun sold out to Microsoft to defeat Linux. Right after they released one of the *best* Linux desktops on the market. Go figure.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
When .NET is.
About a third to half of the article you're supposedly responding to consists of Mr. Gosling claiming the exact set of baseless allegations your post brings up to be false. In fact, attempting to refute such allegations appears to have been one of his primary reasons for writing said article.
Did you just not notice this? Or did you not read the article? I'm leaning toward the second, since first off it references nothing in this article whatsoever, and second that's an awful long and carefully-formed post to have gotten FP on. Either you read and type reeeal fast, or you wrote this beforehand and waited for another Sun story so you could grab an early post number and get up to Score:5.
So, at any rate, let's give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you read the article. So is what you are implying by your post that you believe Mr. Gosling to be lying when he explicitly brings up the things you allege and says they are entirely untrue and without basis? Why?
I hate to reply, but $50,000 IBM app servers aren't a real competitive threat to Microsoft. Expect it to happen a third time.
IBM is trying to kill Sun, not save them. By 'kill' I don't mean to reduce market share. I mean that IBM intends to put the company out of business. Completely.
Sun is weak right now, and they really don't have a good strategy to counter the full attack of IBM support and services, combined with Linux on their pSeries, xSeries, and mainframe platforms.
Ultimately, Sun will try to adopt the Opteron platform, but that's going to go over with Sun fans just about as well as SGI's foray into Intel workstations and Windows went over with SGI's fans.
Gosling really has his head in the sand in regard to the future of Sun by claiming that Sun is platform neutral and has nothing to fear from x86. Sun makes its money by selling Sparc workstations. Simply claiming that Sun isn't tied to a hardware architecture is just silly. Yes, it has made software for the x86, but like Apple, Sun is a hardware company -- all the software (including Java) exists simply to sell hardware. What happens when people realize that Sparcs no longer have the price/performance ratio?
Funny, I thought that was the whole point of the GPL, it is so free, you can make money off of it.
But I think it will be a while yet until we see Linux take over AIX. But it would be nice to have smit on linux.
This reminds me of a quote in someone's
Primarily what I want is software that doesn't suck.
If it is GPLed too all the better.
If IBM makes a profit from it good for them.
If I can make a profit from it then I'm really happy
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
Companies are the wrong place to put trust. They are a nessisary evil that is to be watched carefully to ensure that they do not abuse their power. They are not God, their whitepapers are not to be followed religeously. As always do whats in the best interest of your particular company. Never fall in love with a company or technology, or you will be burned.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I'm sure James Gosling only wants Java to flourish. But the big catch about the JDK's licence (SCSL) is that it gives Sun a Nuclear Button. Sun has the power to force the Java platform's development to go only in directions they approve. And however pure their intentions are, as a public company they have a legal duty to use that power in a way that makes the most money for their shareholders. If it is ever more profitable to kill Java, for Microsoft cash, say, then Sun will be legally obliged to do it.
Compare this to Perl or Python, where there is no Nuclear Button. No-one has the power to prohibit derivatives. And so Perl and Python developers have a much more concrete guarantee that those languages will still be living languages in 20 years' time. Meanwhile there's no sign of the "fragmentation problem" which James Gosling argues they ought to suffer from being truly Open-Source.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Seems to me making the payments as part of a settlement agreement and simply disengaging might have been the more sensible option from a pragmatic point of view.
That said, I don't actually know.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Remember Java is a library. They'd have to go with the LGPL.
Personally, I am a big fun of java and have been for years. I am a big fan of Open source, and have been for even longer. But I can not understand why people see the need for merging the two.
I have serious doubts that Java would continue at its current development schedule if open sourced. Nothing is stopping open source groups from working on a free Java right now. In fact GCJ and Kaffe people have been working on it for years.
Are they anyway close??
How can we tell Sun what to do with their developer time? Why not go donate some time/money/resources to an effort like kaffe.org instead?
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Notably the fact that the patent grant only applies for implementations that:
- include a complete implementation of the current version of this specification without subsetting or supersetting;
- implement all the interfaces and functionality of the required packages of the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition, as defined by SUN, without subsetting or supersetting;
- pass all test suites relating to the most recent published version of the specification of the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition, that are available from SUN six (6) months prior to any beta release of the clean room implementation or upgrade thereto;
seem (at least on the face of it) problematical for Open Source development. Those are fairly rigid requirements and if you are only 99% of the way there then you simply don't have a patent grant....Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
That's what they do.
That's why a patch set for Java's sources was in the FreeBSD ports forever, yet everyone says 'freebsd didn't have Java.' There was no binary distribution of that possible because it hadn't passed through Sun yet.
The Java specs are available for the most part. The only problem is no one knows what the tests for Java compliance are, but anyone with the cash can send software to take them and be able to be called 'Java.' Other then that, everything you asked for in your post is already true.
little meaningful technological change in either Microsoft's or Sun's products as a result of the settlement
.NET becomes the standard rather than Java, and most of all to firmly entrench and spread their ultimate goal of Trusted Computing.
I dissagree.
Has it not dawned on anyone else that Microsoft current averarching agenda is the Trusted Computing rollout? The information on the Microsoft/Sun deal is very light on details, but it sure looked to me like it included all the licencing and protocals Sun would need to produce Trusted Computing servers to operate with Microsoft Trusted desktops. It specifically mentioned "identity management" interoperability.
With Sun on board Microsoft gets to avoid charges that it's "Palladium" system is a monopoly. Suddenly it is a multi platform multivendor standard. $2 billion to sweepaway past anti-trust charges, to ensure
And mere days later Microsoft hands over nearly another half-billion to InterTrust to scoop up all of the DRM patents rights for Trusted Computing.
Microsoft is spreading the money around to pave the way for Trusted Computing. And for Microsoft it's pocket change.
What really catched my attention though is the timing on the two deals. Suns deal with Microsoft clears up past infringents by both parties, it grants Sun future rights to the required patentas Microsoft held. BUT! Microsoft did not yet hold InterTrust's DRM patents. Did Microsoft just pull a fast one on SUN? Possibly leaving Sun totally screwed because the deal did NOT include the InterTrust patents that Sun would actually end up needing?
That would be EXACTLY the sort of "sharp" business tactics Microsoft is notorious for. They dazzle their business "partners" with huge dollar signs to sign a deal, all the while holding a plan to yank the rug out from under them.
I think Sun better examine the InterTrust deal under a microscope then review their own contracts.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.