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

Not sure about Bazaar, but it seems Bizarre

[mfh]

Why are they quibbling? It's all really bizarre to me! (The two are on the same side, right? Or did Microsoft's settlement with Sun change things?)

Re:Not sure about Bazaar, but it seems Bizarre

[Anonymous Coward]

The two are on the same side, right?

Here's how the concerned sides act to each other in a very simplified manner:

Open Source community about Microsoft: Shared Source isn't Open Source, but thanks for the instaler. Your closed source sucks because there are too few eyes.

Open Source community about Sun: It would be nice if you would decide where you really stand, but thanks for OpenOffice.org. Your closed source could be better with more eyes.

Sun about Microsoft: We would like to get some of the money you are getting from your monopoly-like marketshare, but you have shown that you can not be trusted.

Sun about Open Source: Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Microsoft about Open Source: We like the BSD, we don't like copyleft.

Microsoft about Sun: Buzz off or we will crush you.

JCP is anything but open

[jeffphil]

I wanted to get the JSR 168 compatibilty toolkit for research. Note the text on the page for getting this toolkit:

The TCK will be available to Qualified
Not-for-Profits and Qualified Individuals for no
charge as per Section F.III of the JSPA 2.

So I sent an email off, and got a very quick response saying I had to complete this huge form and fax it back and then I may qualify.

Certainly a cathedral model.

Re:JCP is anything but open

[Kunta Kinte]

So I sent an email off, and got a very quick response saying I had to complete this huge form and fax it back and then I may qualify. Certainly a cathedral model.

Ok, let me get this straight...

Sun's model is cathedral like because you had to fill and fax a form?!

there are real issues at stake

[jeif1k]

This is exactly the kind of semantic pissing contest that turns people off of open source people. Don't give this thing the wings it so richly doesn't deserve.

Sun is trying to market their products by taking advantage of the good will and trust that open source licenses have and misrepresenting their proprietary products as being associated with open source, and you blame "open source people" for it? You should be blaming Sun marketing and management. Their behavior has been reprehensible.

Open source people have better things to do than to worry about every single proprietary product out there. Get Schwartz and Sun to shut up about open source and cathedrals and bazaars and nobody will waste a second thought on Sun anymore. But as long as Sun keeps misleading people, open source advocates will respond because Sun's behavior is threatening the future of the open source movement.

Re:I'm not sure how I feel about this

[jeif1k]

I'm sure this has been discussed to death up until now, but how does open-sourcing an API work?

Up to now, very few APIs have been proprietary. Sun has broken new ground by successfully asserting a high level of control over the Java APIs (not just their implementation).

If there is a fork, doesn't that present huge problems for the development community?

Languages like C, C++, Fortran, Perl, shell, and Python have all thrived in the absence of the level of control that Sun is trying to exercise. The reason is simple market economics: implementations that don't provide the features that users want disappear on their own.

Sun is trying to substitute their own interests for the wisdom and preferences of their end users. They are churning out one API after another, but users have no choice but to build on what Sun ships; even if there were alternative implementations, users would still be forced to accept whatever garbage Sun and the JCP dream up.

At least with C, you have the benefit of compiling. With Java, you are compiling to java bytecode, which is still interpretted, and still prone to problems between the forks.

Modern C programs have numerous shared library dependencies; Java's byte-code based system would, if anything, be more robust.

I guess you kind of experience this problem with shared libraries under *NIX, but at least you have the possibility for static compiling. You are stuck with the JRE for Java, no?

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.

Honesty

[Shambhu]

Things goes to something that has been bothering me recently. This isn't something that is new, I'm sure it's been around as long as we've had intelligent (hah!) expression. But it seems a bit more prevalent recently. I'm talking about presumably basically honest people being willing to misrepresent something to their (perceived) advantage as long as some loose interpretation of their words can be considered to be true. And by 'some' interpretation, I mean an interpretation other than what they hope the majority of their audience will make.

I don't know the first thing about Schartz, so maybe he's just a slime ball or maybe he just didn't understand the underlying concepts of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, but this sort of behaviour seems to be considered fair ball play these days. And I think it is something that should be left behind on the playground. Heck, it wasn't that common on most the playgrounds of my childhood, outside of certain particular types of debates (where it was understood that different rules of conduct held sway).

Am I right? Is there more of this in the public sphere these days? Or is it just the same-old, same-old?