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Open source Java?

Posted by Zonk on from the open-source-that-wakes-you-up-in-the-morning dept.

Bruce writes "Newsforge is reporting that Java 2 Standard Edition, may soon be set free of Sun Microsystems' notoriously complicated licensing. A group of 12 Apache developers have put together a proposal called Harmony. The proposal appeared as a simple project call last Friday on an Apache incubator mailing list. It would make this new, built-from-the-ground-up version of Java available under the Apache 2.0 free software license. And it's causing quite a stir in the Java community, especially since respected Sun frontmen Tim Bray, Simon Phipps, and Graham Hamilton have given the project their blessing. As yet there has been no reaction from Dr. Java, James Gosling himself, who is in Brazil talking to developers. In a FAQ on the Apache site, Harmony project leader Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote: 'We believe that there is broad community interest in coming together to create and use an open source, compatible implementation of J2SE 5, the latest version of the Java 2 Standard Edition specification. While the Java Community Process has allowed open source implementations of JSRs for a few years now, Java 5 is the first of the J2SE specs that we are able to do due to licensing reasons.'"

3 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. I was under the impression... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That there was an open source java project already, BlackDown. I fail to see what the big deal is here really, and arn't the Java standards open anyways and anybody could just write up an open JVM/Compiler? I mean nothing is stopping anybody on /. (or in the world) from writing say their own C Compiler, or Lisp compiler, or their own Virtual machine software, once you know the hardware of the target system it shouldn't be complicated to get a "working" emulation/compiler. Now for performance you would probably be better off using an existing solution, but thats why we have Sun's Compiler.

    1. Re:I was under the impression... by k98sven · · Score: 5, Informative

      Blackdown, Kaffe, GCJ, and quite a few similar "branches", all getting somewhere 60% down the way and stopping there. Somehow I don't quite believe the new project will get anywhere near "usable" as well.

      Ok, first Blackdown is 100%. It's not an open source VM. It's a port of Sun's.

      Kaffe and GCJ haven't stopped anywhere. Both are using the same class library (GNU Classpath).

      Does this look like 'stopping'?

  2. Dupes Ahoy! by jalefkowit · · Score: 5, Informative

    I liked this story better when it was posted a week ago.

    C'mon, "editors". This has to be getting embarrassing. Right?

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