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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."
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?)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I think he may have meant to say "Bizarre." Having dealt with support, I would agree with that statement.
Nothing more nothing less.
"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.
Certainly a cathedral model.
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 ).
Didn't Microsoft try to make their own Java implementation(J++) and didn't sun go after them for it because it didn't stick to the java standards? Is that open source?
If you don't like the linux kernel you can take the code, make your own kernel, and even break whatever standards you want....Linus isn't going to drag you to court for breaking the POSIX standard or something.
Can the same be said or Java? In fact parts of it are still under a propietary license as the article states...so people who live in glass houses.....
I for one am glad that they don't open the possibility of a fork for Java. It would be a stupid move. Just look at all the bullshit that went down with Microsoft, their attempts to do so, and the resultant chilling effect that had on Java on the desktop.
If I was an American (god forbid) and Sun WAS to open source Java after spending all that time in court with Microsoft regarding their aforementioned forking, I'd say the appropriate thing to do would be to chase them down with pitchforks and torches for wasting so much taxpayer money.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Yes, it's semantical in the sense that 'open source' means something specific, and that Sun is trying to use that term to describe something as 'open source' which is not 'open source' by anyone else's definition but Sun's.
I don't like semantical debates at all. (see my latest journal entry?)
Hacker vs. cracker is silly. Because that's a case of someone trying to replace common usage of a word with a less-common (but still valid) usage.
This is not silly. This is Sun trying to subvert the term 'open source' for their own PR purposes.
What most people are referring to when the mean 'open source' is fundamentally different from what Sun is calling 'open source'.
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.
This is not a signature.
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.
Don't give this thing the wings it so richly doesn't deserve.
Unfortunately, that approach doesn't work. If you don't vigorously deny an accusation, people tend to assume it's true. It's just like the way corporations handle rumours about them (e.g. the one about Proctor and Gamble being a Satanist organisation). They deny them any chance they get and that's the only effective way of dealing with something like that.
If ESR doesn't respond, a lot of casual readers will just sort of assume that Schwartz's claims are true.
I think calling one a cathedral and the other a bazaar really requires that any developer who wants to actually can create code for other people to use, and that they'll use it if it's good.
There are large barriers to doing that from both the Linux kernel and from Sun. A more bazaar like example is CPAN or sorceforge. Anybody who creates something coherent can have it published there for everyone to use.
Java and Linux are much more limiting. You can't "hawk your wares" in either case. That said, I don't think this should be absolute...more like a scale. Linux is closer to the bazaar than Java, I think.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
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.
That's also no accident, since Java is the only major software product Sun has that is still of any relevance to the market.
/. community always mentions IBM and HP as the companies that embrace and understand Open Source and Linux. I don't get that .....
Do you think the acceptance of 'Linux on the Desktop' would have been on the level it is now, without OpenOffice / StarOffice? None of the attempts (do I hear Munchen) to wipe MS from the typical office desktop would have had any success without Sun's StarOffice or OOo. In my book that is relevance to the market.
The same can of course be said about Ximian (Novell) or Mozilla (Netscape/AOL), but what are HP's or IBM's contributions to the Linux world, without which Linux wouldn't have made it? Still, the
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
To those that are bad-mouthing ESR for responding, I think he should since Schwartz used ESR's reference in making his points.
And Sun doesn't get it completely. I applaud them for everything they have done, but if 'realists' look at whats going on, it seems to me that SUN is in bed with MS and will attempt to push Linux into obscurity if not out-right kill it if it can.
Maybe a third model can be added called Markets and it would more accurately describe SUN. They want to be the store you come to and you pick from the wares they choose to carry, from suppliers they choose, not you. They don't like small distributers and will undercut them until they go under, form unions you have to join to practice, and make laws so the little guy can't compete.
It's because java isn't free (open source) software that it has to be forked (with GCJ, Kaffe, et al).
A nice, DFSG-compliant, GPL-compatible license would make all of our lives easier and a fork wouldn't be necessary.
speaks for the majority of Java developers. Most of us are happy with Sun's stewardship of Java. The platform is solid and feature rich with huge thirparty support. The JCP seems to work albeit slowly. The quality of the specs are very high.
Most Java developers have no intention of modifying or fixing the VM and are simply happy with the wonderful set of libraries available to them (Open source or otherwise).
As of 1.4, the quality of the Java VM has been ver good. JDK 1.5 rocks and the platform is alive and well. Thanks to Sun, IBM and mainly Apache.
Are things perfect? Not by any means. I just can not name one platform that I would substitue Java with to write my business applications.
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?
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
Free markets: nobody has a right to vote how you may or may not act with your own stuff - but if they don't like it, they can get their own stuff and do as they please instead, or go to someone else they prefer. Result: egregious misbehaviour causes a "fork" where customers move away. Also result: not only is the majority happy, but also all profitable minority niches of the market are served.
Not surprising ESR thinks this way considering he's a libertarian and possibly an anarchist
The reason many people don't equate this with Microsoft tactics is that Microsoft hatred is all about protecting the value of guild crafts and nothing about principle. Windows hatred is simply the modern equivalent of the hatred the Cobol and Fortran camps had of C. The future really hurts when it threatens to make your own skills obsolete.
On Java it was Sun who were being the evil proprietary monopolists. Their objective was to reduce every platform to the level of Solaris, leveling down, not up. Suns approach was "If you dare do anything that I can't I'll sue you."
Java could have been the future of computing but there is no way that any company, let alone a declining company like Sun can be trusted with the complete control they demand. The chances of Sun ending up in a SCO like position in five years time are significant.
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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.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
gcj and kaffe aren't forks; they're new implementations. But you're right that java's unfreeness is a large part of why they exist.
You're a suburbanite.
Windows hatred is simply the modern equivalent of the hatred the Cobol and Fortran camps had of C. The future really hurts when it threatens to make your own skills obsolete.
.NET for the same reason C/C++ effectively beat Cobol/Fortran.
I think the analogy is apt, but backwards. The Cobol/Fortran and C camps had mutual dislike. Cobol/Fortran represented entrenched, well-paid, proprietary interests. It was the analog of Microsoft today. C represented the slightly chaotic, open, non-proprietary alternative, like Linux today. And today, the dislike between Microsoft developers and OSS is also mutual.
Microsoft hatred is all about protecting the value of guild crafts and nothing about principle.
Yes, and that sums it up: people are tired of paying a premium for the Microsoft guild crafts, in particular since VB/VC++/.NET developers in general just aren't very skilled technically. That is why OSS has taken off. And OSS will beat Microsoft Windows and
On Java it was Sun who were being the evil proprietary monopolists. Their objective was to reduce every platform to the level of Solaris, leveling down, not up. Suns approach was "If you dare do anything that I can't I'll sue you."
Java could have been the future of computing but there is no way that any company, let alone a declining company like Sun can be trusted with the complete control they demand. The chances of Sun ending up in a SCO like position in five years time are significant.
I fully agree with those points. I think Sun is worse than Microsoft: Microsoft represents a particular approach forcefully, but at least they are honest about it (wrong, and doomed to failure, but honest). Sun, on the other hand, is just misleading people about what they are doing. And I also see the danger of an SCO-like meltdown. However, I think people are wising up to the threat and Java is becoming less and less popular for OSS.
The point is that no one gives a damn. The analogy between the cathedral and the bazaar has become so twisted, stretched, and debased as to become meaningless. To me it has the same flavor as the much abused quote from Gandhi ("first they laugh at you...") posted ad nauseum on Slashdot