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FSF, OpenOffice.org Team Reach Agreement on Java
Bruce Byfield points out his NewsForge (part of OSTG) article about something good coming out of the conflict over Java in OpenOffice.org. It begins "A dispute between the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and OpenOffice.org (OOo) over the increased use of Java in the upcoming version 2.0 release of OOo is over
-- at least for now. The two groups have found a short-term solution, and are working together on
ways to keep the dispute from happening again." The story provides a decent background on why it matters, and shows a surprisingly conciliatory attitude on both sides.
It is not an easy thing to write a balanced and informing article about this issue, but Bruce Byfield suceeded in this and we all owe him our thanks for that. I think that there is a great deal of good will on both sides of this discussion and we should *all* try as hard as we can to built upon this good will. By calling each other names we can only all end up loosing. We need not always fully agree with each other, but we should try to accommodate each other as much as possible and try to stress that which we have in common.
This was also posted on the NF page.
Too bad they dont use something like TCL-TK or Ruby... but I kow why that is. There's a hell-uva lot of programs and libraries to use for free(as in gpl'ed).
There's a hell of a lot more for Java. For example, there's no other platform that has as many high quality, cross platform database drivers. And for that matter, Java has quite a few free database engines (HSQL, McKoi, Derby (Cloudscape, etc.) At the end of the day, there simply isn't any other solution that's as well supported and ubiquitous as Java.
At the risk of starting a flamewar, I have to say that I'm proud to have been a vocal early adopter that helped Java reach the status it has today. It's a good language, a good platform, hosted by a good company, and supported by many. Only the original Unix platform had such a profound effect on the industry.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Feedback wanted on how the different distributions are handling this, plus pacakge build instructions.
"It's blatantly obvious when a programmer is using them from the "import sun.xyz.abc", so flame the programmer, not Sun."
and when the programmers are at sun using a sun language?
The concern Stallman had was that OOo wouldn't be compatable with (real and hypothetical) Free Java implementations, a legitimate concern given the difficulty of restricting one's self to an "official" API.
Go program Java for a little while. The "hidden" APIs are not a necessary evil, or in any way desirable to use. The very design of the Java platform is so open that those APIs are almost impossible and completely unncessary to use. Pretty much all examples of this usage comes from the 1.1 days when a few APIs had yet to mature. Foolish developers went off and decompiled Java code to find "extra" features like they could in Microsoft software. Thus any occurances in OOo probably stem from StarDivision's work way back when.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Where's the troll? In the article we're discussing, Stallman complains about the "trap" of Free software depending on non-Free software to run. The BIOS'es on which GNU software runs is non-Free software, and even the non-microcode HW of the CPUs are non-Free; the hardware/software distinction is meaningless in Stallman's model. Yet he's not complaining about the trap. Maybe I should be asking "who's the troll"?
--
make install -not war
Come off this nonsense people. Sun is not losing money hand over fist (they're more or less breaking even right now), and they've made it perfectly possible for others to replicate their technology. Why is the OSS community blaming their failure to do so on Sun?
You keep turning this into an attack on Sun, and it's not. It's an attack on OOo's reliance on Java, which introduces compatibility problems with Free Software.
In other words, you keep *completely* missing the point.
Sun doesn't have to make Java Open Source, but that's not the issue at hand, is it? Relying on Java is not FSF-friendly, so the FSF will try to convince that project to "stay the course", as it were. There's nothing wrong or "nonsensical" about this at all.
Not forking. Being willing to accept an OpenOffice version that had Java in it at all.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
StarBasic is powerful enough for wizards and dialogs. Many of OOo's AutoPilots are written in Basic.
Is there more heavy lifting that really needs Java?
Yes.
Or Python, but...
Or is this a matter of more people know how to code in Java vs. StarBasic?
Using OOo's API with Java is much more difficult than using the same API from OOoBasic. It is the case that there simply are things that cannot be done in Basic...
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Seems to me that you can distribute the JVM without difficulty from Sun. To quote:
The J2SE platform and the JRE are free to download and to use for commercial programming. They are also free to redistribute, if distributed with a value-add application or applet.
Seems to me that OpenOffice.org qualifies for that.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
From The History of the GPL:
I think this case history makes the fears of the GNU people understandable if not justified.while (!asleep()) sheep++
You are kidding I assume?
TrollTech re-licenced QT to something GPL compatible under duress.
Here's hoping the same for Java.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
The Java API *is* well documented. The problem with the extensions is that the open source JVMs (GCJ in particular) did not handle them correctly. This is not a big deal. Someone should report the bugs with GCJ to the project's bugzilla -or- help fix GCJ to get it to work. This was the result of the conflict anyways:
The FSF, Stallman explained, did not have a preference for other programming languages over Java. It simply wanted assurance that any Java code would be compatible with free implementations of Java. After discussion options with Carr, he suggested that the Free Software Foundation would concentrate on expanding the GCJ efforts
Yep. Conflict solved. OO.o can stay free of Sun's JVM if it wishes and GCJ gets some bugs exorcised. Everyone wins.
If you read my original post, you'd find that I have looked at the OOo source code and found no usage of "hidden" APIs. The closest thing that exists is a point where the JVM's AWT package is plugged into OOo. Plugin code exists for Sun and other JVMs. Any open source JVMs (e.g. GCJ) merely need to add their own plugin code. You'll note that JVM providers are just as responsible for web browser plugin code.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Sun has removed all of the sun.* references from OpenOffice itself. If RedHat developers are having trouble compiling, it's because they don't understand how to plug their JVM in. I'm sure that this was resolved on the OOo mailing lists within an hour or two.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Of course you know that he wrote emacs (it's not a clone of anything). Oh, and gcc.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
That's just slander. Do you have any comment implying something like this from RMS? I've never seen one.
Bullshit. Try reading a bit on the FSF website. BSD is specifically identified as a free software license as are lots of others and they have a very clear definition of free software you can use to judge licenses for yourself.
He may prefer the GPL because of copyleft but the GNU project itself chose X (which is MIT licensed) as their windowing system because it was free and ready.
This article isn't about recreating something that isn't GPL either. It's about what happened with Motif and Qt all over again. And he wasn't even talking about a rewrite. KDE used Qt back when it was still non-free and that prompted the creation of GNOME.
Using something like Java has real consequences. For *users*. People on *BSD, BeOS will have a hard time porting/running your software when there is no official JRE offered. Or you could happen to be running Linux on a somewhat less usual processor architechture.
*Sigh* Trolling real hard, aren't you?First of all, why would the GPL not count when it could be argued that it's one of the main reasons for free software's success and is used by something like 70% of free software?
Second, EMACS is very well known to be the original work of RMS and he also wrote the original GNU C compiler. Many of the essential system utilities you use if you're using a GNU/Linux system are a result of the work of the GNU project. I won't even bother commenting on your idiotic remarks on GCJ.
Your beloved BSD still uses some GNU components though. Such as the GNU Compiler Collection which includes "Stallman's Java-clone" and is used to compile each and every application you're using. And don't even get me started on the various GPLed parts. If you're using FreeBSD it also is pretty frustrating to install OpenOffice.org from ports because of the Java dependency. Fortunately Java compiles out of the box so you can still use it. On some other BSD that may not be the case and there are no guarantees that a newer version will still work. Time to go using Windows exclusively, maybe? After all, it has such a nice and free license and everything they do is completely original instead of cloning stuff and then releasing it under the restrictive GPL license.