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Sun Demurs On Open-Source Java

Posted by timothy on from the titles-redone-at-great-expense dept.

Tarantolato writes "A Sun spokesman and James Gosling now say that there are no set plans to distribute Java under an open-source license. According to Gosling, 'the debate is still going on, fast and furious'. Concerns about forking are cited, as usual."

20 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. I am now convinced by Micro$will · · Score: 4, Insightful

    that Sun is more mixed up than a fart in a fan factory. Free hardware, no, free Java, no free Java.

    1. Re:I am now convinced by pavon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually, it seems to me that after several years of drifting aimlessness they are finally in the process of making a firm decision about whether to make a complete shift away from being a hardware/software/service company to being a pure service company. I think it is normal for there to be disagreement and confusion within the company about when, if and how this is going to happen. What I find disconcerting is how much of this is making it out into the public. Don't these people clear with PR before voicing all these claims? Honestly, all these conflicting reports are just plain unprofessional.

    2. Re:I am now convinced by red+floyd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think you're right. I worked for Litton Data Systems for 17 years (disclaimer, Litton is now part of NorthropGrumman). During that time period, they were (unsucessfully) making the transition from being a hardware shop that did software as well, to a software and integration shop for COTS hardware and software.

      There was a lot of pain until the older upper management left (or was encouraged to leave).

      That sort of shift can kill a company, but if it survives it is much stronger (cf. IBM).

      --
      The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
  2. I've said this long ago... by midifarm · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Apple needs to just bite the bullet and acquire Sun. The bonus of this would be owning SGI and Cray. Any thoughts?

    Peace

  3. Is it any wonder? by DoctorDeath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is it any wonder why they are losing business, money, and on the stock market?

    --
    Sig temporarily out of service.
  4. If forking is a concern... by WegianWarrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...then perhaps they should look at why projects forks? If they can manage to spot things that might lead to a fork early on, they can adress it in a way that benefits everyone as well as avoids forks.

    Off course, that also requires whoever is responsible for the code to be able to work with others...

    --
    Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
    1. Re:If forking is a concern... by sql*kitten · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...then perhaps they should look at why projects forks?

      Because Sun suspects that the Open Source crowd are only interested in the source for what they can get about it. They think that if they opened say Solaris, immediately the "good" parts of it would be copied into Linux and Solaris itself would get nothing out of the deal. Since Linuxes home platform is x86, not SPARC, they'd just be helping Intel's and Dell's sales by doing so.

  5. Time by persaud · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A change of thought often requires a change of guard. Time brings both.

    1. Re:Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah, but speaking as an -employee- of Sun, the time it is taking to change the guard is starting to kill us. At the Director level and _below_ there are a lot of good folks, but above the Director level (including Director+VP level) they just need to go. And we all know that won't happen until the top level is chopped.

      And I keep thinking it will happen after every RIF and annual loss, hell, that thought is what keeps many of us here because we -know- what we could do if things were going in the directions they should.

      I would caveat this with saying that I think Schwartz should stay, but I am starting to believe that his support of Open Source and Linux as mass-market sellers is a facade. However out of the entire upper echelon I would want him to stay over all others.

      Sun has gotten in the feedback-loop track. They make a sweeping change in the -lower- ranks and if it doesn't fix things by the next analyst meeting, they do it all over again. The problem is that the core issues are driven by the upper ranks _and_ you can't measure success or failure of strategic level changes in a couple of quarters. If you change over and over again you never find out which of those changes will actually work. A number of businesses (media outlets especially as relates to ratings/sweeps) are susceptible to this, but I have never seen a player in Tech succumb to it quite so badly.

      Natch I will be clicking the "Post Anonymously" button!

  6. Sun at the right angle? by ignatus · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Given the fact that they claimed to release parts of solaris as open source I seriously doubt the honesty of Sun (both their pro and contra opensource actions). It looks to me as if they are trying to make a fuss about it in order to get in the news. I really hope i am wrong, and that this is the result of a doubting management at Sun, lost in the dilemma to encorporate opensource or not.

    --
    - Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
  7. Sun's like my Grandma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    Sitting on the front porch, arguing with herself.

    The only difference is, Sun is losing those arguments!

  8. OS X + Java and Apple and Servers by idonotexist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is interesting is Apple's integration of Java into OS X (into the OS X System Architecture), in addition to cooperation with Sun (i.e., allowing OS X specific attributes into Sun's Java).

    These are unusual developments because they are not seen between any other OS and Sun.

    Certainly, Apple has an interest in Java and, while holding a very small server market share, increasing its server presence. Merely that Apple is not associated with the server market and Sun is, may be very valuable to Apple.

    Certainly a relationship between Apple and Sun does exist. How far that relationship develops will be interesting to see.

    --
    "There ought to be limits to freedom"
    1. Re:OS X + Java and Apple and Servers by ManFromAnotherPlace · · Score: 4, Funny

      The relationship is clear - you can't have ripe Apples without the Sun.

  9. Re:Forget Sun, get the OSS groups together on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    You might want to look at the parrot project.
    http://www.parrotcode.org/

  10. Can't they fight unwanted forks with trademarks by prostoalex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    According to Sun, Java and JVM are registered trademarks. Since Sun owns the trademarks, can't they fight the unwanted forks by exercising the trademark laws?

    The forks that are compliant and please Sun Micro can use Java(tm) and can distribute JVM(tm). The forks that Sun doesn't really care about and the ones that pollute the Java world would just have to be something different, call them Jaba, Jamboree or something else, but no one is allowed to use the trademarked terms without Sun's permissions.

  11. Huh? by LittleLebowskiUrbanA · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From Jonathan Schartz's bio at sun.com

    "Mr. Schwartz also re-established Sun on the desktop with launch of the Java Desktop System which has quickly become the industry's number one desktop alternative"

    Since when? They can't commit to Open Source anywhere, you have a user agreement the size of the bible with their company-branded Linux distro that's at least a year behind the times and Redhat's new corporate desktop is going to make Sun's "Java" system another joke on Slashdot. Never seen such a leadership problem in my life. Conflicting press statements every damned month.

    --
    This guy is way out there
  12. Do it Sun! We want a fork! by ChiralSoftware · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Forks are good! Forks mean difference and diversity. Difference and diversity means exploration of new ways of doing things. Maybe someone will fork Java and add in a totally new way of doing graphics rendering, or disk access, or network access, or maybe someone will make the JVM into a Linux kernel module or something that runs directly on hardware without an OS, or it will run on other OSes (OpenBSD for example). There are so many possiblities including possibilities that no one has thought of right now. All of these are forks to some degree and who knows what the result of them will be.

    The reason why forks are not dangerous is because people will still want to write "standard" Java code, no matter how many different strange Java-esque things there are.

    Linux is horribly forked. There are dozens of different distros, on dozens of different hardware platforms. There are many different kernels, and the different distros often have their own kernels with their own patches and changes. And here is a perfect example of a fork in Linux which has come back to help all of Linux: Because Linux was forkable, the NSA chose Linux to be the basis of its secure operating system, SELinux. SELinux is so strange and different from regular Linux that it wasn't compatible. It was a true fork, creating a different set of APIs that were mutually incompatible in many ways. The openness of Linux allowed this innovation to occur. It was something that Linus hadn't thought of years before it happened (I'm guessing). And yet it happened. And now, guess what, the work that was done in SELinux has been rolled into 2.6!

    So, we had open source software, which allowed a fork, which allowed for totally innovative, off-the-wall creative development, which turned out to be cooler than people would have expected, which then ended up getting un-forked back into the main codebase!

    If Sun open sources Java in the right way, that is exactly the kind of thing that will happen with Java, too. It's hard to prove this argument, because I can't say exactly what those innovative forks are going to be, becase they're things that people haven't thought of, but that's what will happen.

    So do it Sun!

    -------------
    WAP news

  13. Re:just wait for the license by Decaff · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Total nonsense. Sun is having a debate. If they were not having a debate, Slashdot would ridicule them for their fixed attitude and rigid management.

    They are not running into Microsoft. They won a battle with Microsoft, and won big. Microsoft gave in and paid them a lot of money.

  14. Where is the business case???!!! by Kunta+Kinte · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Kaffe has been developing an open source Java implemenation for a while now. There is GNU ClassPath, GCJ and a bunch of others.

    (i) Why aren't the people yelling for open source Java busy working on Kaffe and the others?

    It seems to me this is more of a "Sun, give us your code or you suck!" type of deal, than anything else.

    (ii) Who is going to put up the resources to continue to research and development the Java platform? If the open source community has not been successful in creating an open source java from scratch, what makes you think that we would be able to maintain and improve the technology?

    Netscape was talked into releasing and subsequently rewriting their flagship product as open source. That did not save them, in fact they spent a ton of money doing that. This move benefited the open source crowd ( I am writing this from mozilla ), but how did this help netscape?

    (iii) Has OpenOffice/StarOffice improved Sun's bottom line much? Any?

    Does anyone have a denfensible on plan on continuing the R&D of Java after open sourcing it? And I mean a business plan that is backed up by data?

    --
    Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
  15. Re:Thanks Sun! by Decaff · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So.

    A company that has been promoting UNIX since the early 1980s sickens you.

    A company that has pioneered open standards for decades sickens you.

    A company that has freely contributed APIs and protocols such as NFS to development community sickens you.

    A company that gives away free compilers and runtimes sickens you.

    A company that uses Linux sickens you.

    Do I detect a slight bit of exaggeration here?