Slashdot Mirror
OpenOffice 2.0 Criticized on Use of Java
karvind writes "Yahoo is running a story on how OpenOffice 2.0 Faces Opposition over Its Use of Java. According the article: "The problem, according to some free software voices, is that OO.o relies too much on Sun Microsystems Inc.'s proprietary Java programming language in an open-source project. In particular, free software advocates are objecting to the use of Sun specific Java code for such OO.o 2.0 features as the new, Microsoft Access-like database management program, Base and Writer's (OO.o's word processor) document wizards." Linus Torvalds also moved to an open-source solution for software configuration management system."
There's nothing wrong with wanting a completely free software stack, and I think there's generally less animosity out there than people are making it seem.
Python which is slow, has a much smaller user base and far less consistent and well-documented standard library?
Perl whose readability for many coders is next to nothing?
C++ because we all know that more buffer overflows and random craziness is what OpenOffice needs to compete with Microsoft Office?
C# since 93-95% of the desktop users out there use Windows, why bother with the minority of others? (I actually quite like C# and am hopeful about Mono)
Ruby because a language that most coders have never even seen before is clearly the best way for a fresh start?
Objective-C because when Steve Jobs takes over the world, we'll need to be on his good side?
C, since objects really are overrated for anything that normal developers might want to maintain?
So seriously, of all of the major language choices, which would be better?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Funny, this isn't as far fetched as it seems.
Replacements are already there, e.g. koffice, but they could do with more developers and users. So we point out the problems with OOo in the hope more people will come and use them and code for them, in the same way the OSS movement as a whole points out the problems with closed source software like windows.
I am trolling
Of course you can. Stallman himself points out that that's how free software was developed. If the first free software had had to wait for the first free user to toggle the first free monitor and free assembler into memory one byte at a time, there wouldn't be any free software. Free software was built on back of unliberated software.
The message you quote is from 1 Jul 2002, nearly 3 years ago. Do you have any current indication that com.sun.* classes are still in use?
Which is precisely what the Free Software Foundation is doing. The FSF people are hoping that the folks at Sun will want to prevent a fork bad enough that they will work at little harder at making OO.org work with gcj. If Sun doesn't play ball then the FSF will fork OO.org and their gcj version will undoubtedly become the version that gets shipped with at least the Debian and Red Hat (and Fedora) distributions (and very probably others as well). And don't think these organizations are bluffing either. Gnome got its start in almost exactly the same way. The FSF, Red Hat, and Debian didn't like the licensing for KDE and so they did something about it.
The real question is whether or not Sun wants a large chunk of its current OO.org's user base to use someone else's fork of OO.org because that's what is currently shaping up to happen. If Sun's execs think that these organizations (especially the FSF) are likely to be "reasonable" about the use of non-free software then they are clearly delusional. Sun has been dealing with GNU software and the FSF forever, and they have never seen them back down once.
The worst part is that Sun really needs the Free Software faction of the Open Source community. After all, it really does take a zealot to propose replacing MS Office with some other piece of software. The pragmatists in the crowd are more than happy to wait and see if MS Office can really be replaced. The people that are currently considering replacing MS Office with OO.org are doing so because they believe in Free Software. Without enough zealots to take that first step OO.org is never going to have serious market penetration.
Framing java as "not open sourced" misses some significant shades of gray in the software development community. The useful tools for java development have been constructed by a community, and are available for download from sourceforge, apache, sun and other 'vendors'/bazaars.
The useful tools for competing languages are highly proprietary, and the availability of mature, useful communities and code for extending those languages is far more limited than with java.
Criticizing OpenOffice for being built with Java, which isn't "open", is kind of silly, in this broader context. It amounts to cutting off our nose to spite our face.
objectWizard42
What about platforms where Sun does not provide a JVM? Those people will never be able to tun the full OOo, and the more Java used, the less they will be able to use. Will it eventually be zero?
You simply use a JVM from someone else. Use Apple's VM, or IBM's, or HP's, or BEA's.
Although Sun largely controls Java, it is by no means the only supplier of Java.
I've been writing Java web-apps for nearly 6 years now. In that time, most of them have been deployed to Linux under resin (caucho.com); recently, they've been deployed under WebLogic (a couple of clients asked for it, so they got it, despite not actually needing it).
I've used a variety of different versions of Linux and Windows on my desktop as suited my whim at the time. As you say, that's essentially irrelevant though; my code targets the JVM, not the Windows JVM or the Linux JVM or the Mac OS X JVM, just the JVM.
As it happens, I develop under the Sun JVM, but may well be deploying to that, or IBM's, or BEA's jrockit JVM. As long as it's the correct release, it's immaterial. (And in fact, sometimes I've not even *known* what JVM is being used in production)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
AFAIKT the JCP is legally a fully non profit subsidiary of Sun. The money collected goes to Sun. Sun's Process Management Office selects the experts and the specification lead for the Expert Group. That means your comment is essentially like saying, "General Moters doesn't control the engine specification Buick does". This may be true but ultimately Buick doesn't exist in any legal sense.
Regardless of this however , of the 14 Expert Groups that have been formed, eight are led by Sun employees. Which means Sun controls Java in practice. Now of course the same can be send for Open Office (which is basically a Sun product) so I'm not sure what to say about the original complaint.