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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.
This stuff happens because you shouldn't build open/free software off proprietary software. If you want to use open software as a foundation or library for your proprietary software, that's fine...but you don't develop open source code with a closed source language. It defeats the purpose of it being open. Linus found out the hardway and I'm glad that Open Office will hopefully be having an easier time...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Your "common sense" is not too common when it comes to most Java apps I have ever attempted to use.
There are two possible conclusions. Either all Java developers are idiots, too stupid to learn a real language, or these are important rules to nail down before they become problems. Since the former obviously isn't true, it must be the latter.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
As opposed to the type of zealotry which some people say is killing Debian.
The reason this is so important is that if all the source is openly available, nobody can make it go away. It's essential to avoid "drug dealer marketing" - the first one is free, but then it's going to cost you. There have been too many products that started out "open", and then started to cost money once they had users locked in.
The typical progression for psuedo-free software is
Examples are Intellicad, Sendmail, and QNX
It's the reliance on problematic (to the FSF) technology that this issue (flamewar? WTF?) is about.
The FSF's failure to produce a JVM based on open specs is NOT everyone else's problem. If Mr. Stallman wants to fix the situation, he should be inciting his troops to fix their Open JVMs. Otherwise he can keep his trap shut, because he has no right to complain.
emacs, gcc, gnu...
Funny, it seems that EMacs and GCC have a lot of help from corporate entities. And what is "gnu"? I'm not familiar with that program.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Personally, I was more than a bit disheartened when I first found out about how much of OOo 2.0 required Java. While Portable OpenOffice 1.1.4 worked quite well on machines without Sun's JRE installed, I was rather worried how Portable OpenOffice 2.0 would fare (just compiled a test alpha using the latest UPX beta, etc). If they split out a version that didn't require Java installed, I'd probably base Portable OpenOffice on that instead.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
What if Sun suddenly did turn malevolent (Schwartz - one of the loud mouths - is no fan of the GPL, after all) could they do real damage? Yup.
If a malevolent entity bought Sun - with a depressed Sun stock, it's a real possibility - could that entity do damage? Oh boy, you bet.
Bzzzzzzzt. Wrong, but thanks for trying.
You missed that IBM has made Java and Linux the core of their strategic play.
Sun can't take Java away (not even Java on Linux). If they tried, IBM would have it tied up in court 'till long after we are all dust.
The only way someone could "do real damage" would be if Sun, IBM and all the other major Java licencees got together and agreed to make damage.
It isn't going to happen. To say otherwise is simple FUD.
Your post may be intended as a joke, but Stallman is indeed pushing for free BIOS'es. He probably supports open designs for devices too. He certainly supports well-documented interfaces for all hardware. If you read Stallman's writings, it's clear that he identifies a difference between physical objects and ideas. Physical objects (including hardware) will always have costs associated with production, which is quite different from the comparatively effortless reproduction and distribution of software/ideas. His viewpoint is certainly extreme, but not inconsistent.
...and KHTML. Would you rather that kind of relationship existed between Sun and OOo? So far, what Sun has value-added to OOo is minimal and has not affected the overall operation of OOo. You don't see Sun making impossible changes to OOo like Apple has with KHTML.
Is KHTML benefiting from Apple? Sure. Much? Not compared to what Apple is getting out of it. I thank God the situation is different here. While I understand Stallman's point, I just wish there was a little more respect or understanding for Sun's considerable efforts in what is a difficult time economically for them.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Would you like to explain to me WHY THIS IS SUN'S PROBLEM?
I don't know if it's "sun's problem", but I would say it's a problem for sun. The problem is that no major linux distribution includes a JVM in its distribution. That makes the Java language far less usefull to developers. If you can't count on a JVM being on a machine, you then have to go through machinations to include a JVM in your software. Even that's difficult since Sun won't let you re-package the JVM.
How is that Suns problem? Well it makes Java less usefull, and I assume Sun wants Java to be as popular as possible. Sun is still competing against Microsoft, and if Suns language is on Linux boxes, that's a win for Sun.
They have given everything away except for the actual rights to Java itself.
Actually one of the big sticking points is re-packaging Java. If they simply allowed that, it'd be included in at least redhat.
If a malevolent entity hit Linus with a bus and acquired his Linux trademarks
Huh? How does someone hitting Linus with a bus get them the Linux trademarks? Someone aquiring Sun is a real possibility. Mergers of large companies happen all the time. If you have to resort to ridiculous comparisons to make your point, you've already lost.
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?
Now you're just making up arguments that no one has made. That's called a strawman argument and is a logical fallacy.
AccountKiller
Lets just put a stop to the java zeolots right here and now...
If you cannot package and distribute the application
"with the JVM" it is not and never will be free.
I happen to like java, but I sure would never use it in something I was gonna distribute.
Got Code?
When are open-sourced based CPUs going to be available? Does anyone know of any available? I don't *feel* free with the current processor offerings available.
Here you go. Check out the OpenRISC 1000 - I am guessing that it will be particularly interesting for you since the 1200 version has been used to demonstrate Linux. Of course the MIPS and Sparc clones can do so as well.
Transmeta was the closest, since Linus worked for them way back when.
Given that the native instruction set was top secret, I would say it was the least open source processor of all.
I use the open office beta every day.
I don't have java installed.
All of the functionality that worked in 1.0+ works better in 2.0, and I don't use any of the additional features. Obviously, some people will want to use those features, but wow, aren't we always the ones yelling at MS for their stupid "wizards" and now we're mad cause we can't use the OOo ones? And isn't MS Access the bane of all db developers everywhere? And now we're upset cause we can't use our own half assed, not nearly as nice version of Access?
Seriously people I don't understand. OOo 2.0 is not "crippled" without java, it works just fine for 100% of the existing (ie 1.0) functionality, and all you're missing is some gay wizards, and a half baked db frontend that crashes all the time. I installed java for about 10 minutes to check out the java features, and then uninstalled it, cause well they sucked. I know this is only a beta release and I'm sure 2.0 will be better.. but it won't be anywhere close to usable, not for anything remotely real.
Sun seems to have a clear strategy of trying to incorporate their proprietary version of Java into open source projects: Mozilla, OpenOffice, Gnome, Apache, etc. But a piece of software ceases to be free when it depends in an essential way on proprietary software.
Fortunately, open source developers are noticing this more and more and are starting to take countermeasures. Hopefully, in the long term, this will lead to unencumbered versions of Java becoming available and acceptable.
It's only "well documented" in the sense that there's a nifty little tool that turns all public methods into pretty HTML pages.
The documentation covers the public and protected methods that are available for use by programmers. Private methods, fields, etc. are not important when writing your own classpath since no one should access them anyways unless they are extending your implementation. GCJ contains many private methods within the classes that are not in Sun's JVM, and vice versa.
If you tried to write a (non-trivial) program that used the non-trivial parts of the Java APIs (like Swing), using only the API documentation, it wouldn't work
Its been done before. Heres an example: http://swingwt.sourceforge.net/
I've written parts for GCJ by only using the API documentation supplied by Sun. I won't say it's an easy task. What the documentation says it's suppose to do and what the Sun JVM actually does requires some work on the implementors part. The only way around this is if Sun would allow JVM writers to view their source without worrying about the license concerns.
There are many projects that do it this way. Look at Mono. Working from only a specification is quite common.
OO.o issues, from my understanding, are because the free implementations of the JVM do not work as they should. With some tweaking, this is very correctable.