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.""

Comments

let's see what happens

[smd4985]

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.

Re:let's see what happens

[jmorris42]

> Would you trust your ecommerce site to Linux?

Depends. Linux and *BSD power a majority of the really impressive sites on the network so I'd certainly be in good company. Solaris is just too expensive for something so clusterable like web services.

Might use a big Solaris box to host the DB on the backend if the site was really major. Postgresql has made a lot of progress and I'll probably revise this remark in another year or so, but Oracle/DB2/Sybase is still what I'd want running the backend if a lot of money was riding on it just because it they have been doing replication and other such enterprise level things long enough to be trustworthy. Of course Oracle and IBM both support Linux as a tier 1 platform these days so running Linux all the way to the backend is certainly possible for all but the largest users who need the 128way Sun boxes.

And I think it goes without saying that Windows has no place in the enterprise except as legacy desktops. Period, end of story. Anyone suggesting otherwise has instantly proven themself to be incompetent and not to be trusted for advice on IT matters.

Re:let's see what happens

[Eminor]

i'm going to 'have a little faith' and trust gosling and mcnealy.

I'll have to agree with that sentiment.

Java is not like a web browser where the users would be ignorant, and just use Microsoft's because that's what they are given. Java developers _know_ who is the authentic source for Java technology. So it's not like Java developers in their masses are going to adopt whatever idiosyncrasies Microsoft implements next.

I think that Sun should be able to keep ahead of Microsoft on the curve of giving developers what they want (history shows that when somebody implements a good idea, Microsoft copies).

I don't think McNealy would let Microsoft steer the ship. I think this is a chess match. The current move may perplex you, as it should, but the reasons why the move was made will be clear soon.

Sun is a fierce in nature when it comes to Microsoft. Don't let yourself think that they gave in so easily. How many Microsoft competitors do you know of that were able to grep a $2 billon settlement out of them?

Even starting to sound like microsoft

[tonythepony]

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?

Re:Even starting to sound like microsoft

[dmaxwell]

You're perfectly free not to use even the tiniest bit of GPLed work in your project in the first place. You and many others seem to be confusing "freedom" with "utter lack of obligation". The GPL is intended to preserve certain freedoms for both users and developers.

A developer with no obligations to others can impose any condition he wishes on a user who desires to use his creation. If you wrote it all yourself and didn't put that tiniest bit of GPLed code in then by all means exercise that freedom.

A user with no obligations to developers can claim any benefit of the code for himself, up and to and including claims of authorship and invention. A user in that position can profit from that code in any way he wishes and return nothing to the developer....not acknowledgement, not improvements, absolutely nothing he doesn't feel like doing.

In the real world, there isn't a way for both users and developers to have no responsibilities whatsoever regarding software. There are a lot of ways to balance the situation so that both sides can retain significant freedoms hence the spectrum of FOSS licenses. Most of these compromises between original developers and downstream recipients can reasonably be called free. ALL of them have restrictions or obligations for at least the recipient of a software package. Even the "truly free" BSD licenses absolutely require that the copyright notice be preserved. It also implictly requires acknowlegement that author had the right to license his work that a way and indeed still owns the original work. It is a dangerous subtlety for the likes of SCO to miss if they try to do to the BSD community what they are doing to the Linux community.

The GPL preserves certain liberties (the so-called "four freedoms") as long as certain responsibilities are accepted. You seem to want those liberties without the responsibility, that "tiniest bit of GPLed code". If you don't use that code then there isn't much argument is there?

I suppose that leaves room for the ongoing semantic debate over what freedom actually is. But there is no reasonable definition of freedom that doesn't include responsibility.

Re:Even starting to sound like microsoft

[Alsee]

How free is code that I can't use unless I want to give away my sofware, mo matter how little a part the GPLd software is?

I have one question for you:
What do you think would happen if you included a "little part" of Microsoft code?

*ALL* copyright is viral. If you use even a single line of Microsoft code you are infected by Microsoft's copyright.

If GPL is viral then Microsoft is ebola. GPL code may "infect" you if you choose to use it, but Microsoft code infects and instantly kill your entire project.

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Re:Even starting to sound like microsoft

[Kombat]

You're perfectly free not to use even the tiniest bit of GPLed work in your project in the first place.

But that's not "free!" Don't you get it? Your response is analogous to someone saying, "Music CDs are not 'free', because I'm not allowed to rip them to MP3 and give them to my friends," and you responding "You're perfectly free to not buy the CDs, and to make your own music."

Just because you happen to agree with the agenda in the GPL doesn't mean you can deny that the agenda exists.

The original poster is correct. If I am not free to use your software however I want, including closing up my derived source and selling the whole she-bang, then it is not truly "free."

1st law of thermodynamics

[alan_dershowitz]

As for Richard Stallman's "Free but shackled: The Java trap," it's hard to know where to begin. He has his own rather peculiar definition of "free" that I think violates the First Law of Thermodynamics (energy is conserved): Developers put a huge amount of energy into creating software, and if they can't get that energy back in a way that balances, then the system falls apart.

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.

Re:mmhmm

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:Gosling's RMS comments show him to be anti-Free

[elmegil]

RMS is essentially a kook.

Let's see. My first exposure to RMS was being told as an undergrad that if I wanted to, I could go log into his accounts at MIT because he didn't bother to keep a password. He has proceeded to rant and rave and rail against anything that is not his pure community of software technicians giving their every line for the greater good.

RMS is essentially a kook.

I couldn't have said it better myself. He has certainly done many great things with his efforts, but in the general scheme of things, he's a kook. If you weren't so hung up on taking the observation personally and finding people to label "Anti Free" perhaps you'd be better able to accept this.

Finally, and to the point, Gosling doesn't call him a kook; he comments that RMS has a peculiar (as in unique) definition of "Free". Some of his comments about GPL are less charitable, but they don't involve whether RMS is a kook or not.

Did you even read the article?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Gosling's RMS comments show him to be anti-Free

[sporty]

In some ways, RMS is a kook. He's taken a basic word, "free" and redefined it. Free doesn't have to mean, free for anyony to get and use. Free can also mean, as gosling pointed out, free of charge. In some ways, the bsd license is "free-er" than GPL, as you owe no one anything other than a statement in the source. You can sell it in binary form, no hooks attached.

Re:Where is IBM in the settlement?

[Anarcho-Goth]

It kills me that all these OpenSource advocates want things to be FREE. The opensource developers donate all their FREE time to developing Linux which IBM can turn around and sell hardware to run linux which they get for FREE which returns PROFITS for IBM.

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 .sig:

• ESR: I want to live in a world where software doesn't suck.
  
• RMS: Any software that isn't free sucks.
  
• Linux Can I have Free Beer?

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 :)

Re:Gosling's RMS comments show him to be anti-Free

[abe ferlman]

I mostly agree with this, and I'm hypersensitive to RMS bashing. The Gosling article did not include ad hominem attacks on Stallman.

However, it did contain stunningly misleading comparisons between the GPL and Java's licensing. He hides it all in a clever ruse- he accuses Stallman of redefining freedom to suit Stallman's agenda, then redefines freedom himself to suit Gosling's agenda. I'll leave as an exercise to the reader which license gives you more freedoms. Hint: it's the GPL.

Re:Change in Rhetoric

[Alsee]

little meaningful technological change in either Microsoft's or Sun's products as a result of the settlement

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 .NET becomes the standard rather than Java, and most of all to firmly entrench and spread their ultimate goal of Trusted Computing.

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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