ESR Responds to Sun's Claims of Being a Better Bazaar

UnixSphere writes "Sun has been quoted to have said, 'Sun's Java is developed more in the mode of the bazaar than Linux is,' which has prompted OSI President Eric Raymond to correct Sun's view of what open source really is."

Comments

Well there's a shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Say anything even remotely related to something ESR has spouted about in the past and you are guaranteed your very own personalized 8-page response. He's the most trollable man in the history of the Internet.

"Why is this?" you might ask. It's governed by the simple fact that ESR has nothing better to spend his prodigious amounts of free time on than the literary equivalent of listening to himself speak. I really wish Slashdot wouldn't encourage this guy by posting a story about him, because he really doesn't matter.

Re:ESR has no credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Eric Raymond didn't write Sendmail, it might explain alot if he had but I suspect you're thinking of the equally sucky fetchmail ( which he didn't write either IIRC ).

Sun will not truly open source solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun will not open source Solaris in the manner everyone is thinking! They will open up the code for review, but nobody will be allowed to use the code in their own software without paying money to sun.

I dont see why everyone blindly trusts Sun. This is purely a publicity stunt. I repeat and let me make this clear .. Sun will not allow people to freely modify and/or re-use portions of the solaris code in their own products.

Solaris will be "open sourced" so that people can browse the code (maybe having clicked through or signed an agreement essentially barring the signer from helping to make any competing operating system. Ever.

There will be serious problems with Sun's license.

Read my lips:

SUN WILL NOT MAKE SOLARIS AVAILABLE UNDER AN OPENSOURCE.ORG APPROVED LICENSE.

Sun's software was certainly bazaar originated

[ehack]

Sun's software was originally Stanford's and the various utilities were deveoped by whoever was hanging round the computer rooms - it might be better if ESR etc stopped trying to teach the Unix pioneers what Unix is.

Re:Free Forking?

[SHEENmaster]

The difference is that Microsoft did it maliciously. If Sun forked an ancient version of Redhat, and sold it as Sun Redhat/Linux, Redhat would be rightfully pissed when people assumed that their modern software is crap because of it.

When Microsoft implemented J++, they touted it as Java, but it lacked many features that became standard in Java, like Swing. Including their own VM with Windows made users think they had Java, when they didn't, such that Swing applets couldn't be generally deployed for years.

I'm not defending Sun's claim that Java is more open than Linux, just that they had every right and every duty to keep Microsoft from fucking Java up for all of us.

What about GCJ and Kaffe and others?

[Kunta Kinte]

You are only stuck with the JRE for Java because Sun keeps you from having a choice. If Java were an open standard, there would be dozens of different implementations, and those implementations would work out amongst themselves what features were important core features and what features were vendor-specific extensions.

Yeah right! Magical open-source developers will come out of nowhere right?

If you want open-source Java, and feel serious about helping out, then you have GCJ and Kaffe.

Sun has allowed alternative JVMs for a long time and there are now many other JVMs to choose from.

You have your opportunity you develop Open-source Java, put your time and money where your mouth is, support Kaffe today!

Or do you just want to freeload off Sun's investement in their JVM?... Even if they already provide it for free.