Sun Unilaterally Revokes the FreeBSD Java License

ravenII writes "The FreeBSD foundation has announced the news of Sun terminating the SCSL OEM-like license given to FreeBSD foundation. The foundation's attempts to contact Sun to renegotiate the license have gone unanswered. Javalobby.org also carries the news." It would seem that Sun has terminated all SCSL licenses across the board in preparation for the release of Java 5, and while the renegotiation process may be a bit bumpy, it's likely that Java will continue to be ported to FreeBSD.

Comments

I never understood

[miyako]

I never understood how it's good for Sun to prohibit the redistrobution of Java with BSD or Linux.
It seems to me that any benefits there might be would be lost because they are opening themselves up to having an open source, or at least more easily re-distributable JVM become the most common, and therefore standard, VM.
Besides, if they are giving it away for free anway, what benefit is there to forcing anyone who wants it to get it from Sun?

Re:I never understood

[arivanov]

This means that you do not understand the meaning of java as far as Sun marketing strategy is concerned.

Java as far as Sun is concerned is a method of pushing a large number of customers onto Sun's native *sparc/Solaris platform and the associated software and support contract. The only reason for the existence of ports to other platforms is to bait people into switching.

• It is the only platform with first tier support and the only platform whose scheduler is continuously updated and optimised specifically to match the Java current threading model.
• Java is a big-endinan platform. All internal data representations must be big endian (this is in the standard) and execution on any small endian platform like x86 will always incur a performance penalty. This is similar to what MSFT is doing with .NET. It is specified as little endian for the exact same reason.
• And if performance fails to help the fledging sales (Sun is having a really bad quarter), licensing comes to the rescue.

Better alternatives to Java

[Anonymous Coward]

There are now much better alternatives to Java for many programming tasks.

I've switched over to Ruby and my productivity has skyrocketed. Anyone who's done object-relational mapping using Java for example, should take a look at how Ruby does it using ActiveRecord.

I still use C++ for some programming tasks but find the need to do so less frequent each year. Thank God for smartpointers (boost library).

I might take a look at OCaml in the near future. Heard great things about it.

Story is wrong

[cperciva]

I'm not directly involved here, so I don't know all the details, but I talk to people from the FreeBSD Foundation on a regular basis. Hopefully they'll forgive me if I get some of the details wrong here.

Basically, the story can be summarized as follows:

1. Sun dropped the ball by mistake.
2. FreeBSD Foundation didn't know what was going on, and mentioned the problem in their newsletter.
3. People at Sun realized that they had dropped the ball.
4. Sun picked up the ball and put it through the goal posts (or whatever the right sports analogy is).

This whole story is really just a misunderstanding. Sun wasn't trying to be evil, they just made a mistake, and as soon as they realized that there was a problem they started doing all that they could to fix it.

The new license should be announced Real Soon Now.

A case of bad communication

[phkamp]

Justin Gibbs, The foundations founder and financial officer said yesterday that this was just a case of bad communication and that it was already resolved. Poul-Henning

Re:A case of bad communication

[Homology]

Justin Gibbs, The foundations founder and financial officer said yesterday that this was just a case of bad communication and that it was already resolved. Poul-Henning

But a very nice reminder of what SUN can do to those using Java.

Who is the rambling, raving lunatic now, uh?

[hummassa]

Disclaimer 1: I have READ the Fine Article.

What it is: Sun licenses the JVM to the FreeBSD community under the SCSL. Sun unilaterally has the right to revoke it. Sun DID revoke it, albeit in preparation to negotiate terms for new community license. Guys at FreeBSD do not know who to ask right now. E-mails from non-revenue-generating FreeBSD got unanswered.

What it really is: RMS is right. Anyone deploying Java apps under FreeBSD for a reason or another is now a hostage in this situation. Why? Because Sun *can* (and, depending on shareholders $$$ desire, *will*) pull the plug at any time. Why? Because the JVM and standard classes are NOT FREE SOFTWARE. Free Software is about freedom, not about price.

Oh, come on, everyone with prospects of starting their first Java projects, especially governments going the Free Software way, should DROP it and go to other platform.

Re:Ah, I understand now.

[Homology]

The SUN Java is NOT under a BSD like license! Of course, OpenBSD will never agree to the terms offered by SUN, so here you must manually fetch the relevant files from the SUN and agree to their obnoxius license. On OpenBSD the port tells you where to download the relevant files as part of installation : Java 1.4_2 Makefile

My guess is that FreeBSD has to something similar.

No need to attack me...

[hummassa]

A) I was reading at -1. The "this was a mistake and we cleared it up" post had not showed up when I started posting.

B) It is not relevant that the revoking was by mistake. Eventually, it can be done on purpose, too. And that is the problem.

C) No, they did not knew exactly who to ask, and at least when the FreeBSD foundation report was done they did not receive any answer. It's irrelevant for the discussion of this piece, IMHO, that they eventually cleared up the situation. Had the climate at Sun WRT FreeBSD been different, Sun could stall this and caused a lot of damage. And they still can, at any time, because Java is not Free Software.

D) I am not raving and nor is RMS, which is whom I was referring to. Java is not Free Software. If you are considering Free Software (as a lot of governments are doing nowadays with a lot of good reasons to do so... see http://www.gnu.org.pe/resmseng.html) you should not consider Java as a good option for software development (unless Kaffe [or other Free JVM] + GNUClassPath is good enough for you). And this was my conclusion in the end of my post.

E) As an aftertought, disclaimer, etc: I started to post my piece as soon as I saw the blurb (when I woke up this morning) and it had only 9 posts at -1. When I finally organized those three short paragraphs, and clicked Submit, it had 20+ posts, with some (3?) of those under the "A case of bad communication by phkamp (524380) (#11273654)" post. I took good 10-15 minutes to write this answer up, because I don't troll. I believe that RMS is right and that proprietary software is a legalized scam. And I really like J2EE (technically) as a platform but I really dislike the power that Sun exerts over it and the MS-like lock-in that it represents.

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And this is not a sig.