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IBM Collaborating With Open Source Java Project
lord_rob the only on writes "According to news.com, IBM has begun participating in the open-source Java project Harmony and intends to contribute code to the initiative, according to a Big Blue executive. At this point, IBM's participation is limited to thoughts on design, but the company has plans to contribute code to the project in the future." From the article: "We really like to see the community get started, and they're still working out the rough edges of what they want to deliver. And we didn't want to disrupt that,"
I always thought Eclipse was open source... I could be wrong on that. I do however hope they plan on making the Java Doc inside the code better than Eclipse's piss poor attempt(was there even an attempt?). There wouldn't be a need to write tutorials on how to use the SWT/JFace APIs if the Java Doc was complete... or even there in some cases.
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
Looks like ~not~ open sourcing Java is fragmenting the Java language after all!
Agile Artisans
I'm a programmer. I've been burned by bugs in my tools before. Sure MOST bugs are my fault, but once in a while I'm pretty sure it is the tool's fault. With open source I can fix those bugs and move one. With closed source I'm at the mercy of vendors who rarely care about my project.
Then too, a lot of documentation is bad. Either it doesn't exist, or the program doesn't work like the docs say. The source code is definitive about what is really going to happen, and I can read it. IF you are not a programmer it doesn't matter because you can't read the source, but I can, so it matters.
IBM says "this is what we want, now get on with making it for us".
There is an open source C#. Take a look at Mono, which is a completely open source CLR and C# compiler. They have implemented most of .NET (although not the Windows GUI, they have a GTK GUI which also runs on Windows, so you can write C# on *nix and run them on Windows directly).
I have read that Mono is complete enough to run VB ASP.NET applications natively on a *nix box. (But not VB GUI apps since they don't have the Windows GUI classes implemented).
As for "Open Source" bias, it ranges from a political belief that all software should be Free (Stallman), to a more practical belief that no one shoul be subject to proprietary lock-in, which is awlays a risk with a single-vendor closed product.
For some it is just the desire that software be free (as in pay no money for it).
I personally subscribe to the "Free Software" philosophy. I believe that we should always be able to see, use, and extend the code we use.
This is why whenever possible I release my code under the GPL. (Mind you, I haven't put anything out there that anyone has really wanted to use! But it is there, in no small part as payment for all the great Free Software I have been able to use.)
I might get into a little Java programming if the environment were open-source.
Why wait when Mono is open-source and C# kicks ass? I say this having done both server and GUI Java development for 5 years, and a having been a very vocal detractor of C# at its inception, until I finally tried it out.
Try Mono; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
If you are willing to forgo Swing and use SWT then GCJ is a pretty compelling choice.
>>Sun will no longer control the only good JVM, and if Sun can't stay at least as good as Harmony, then Sun will no longer control the primary JVM.
How does this differ from the incompatible Java framework released years ago by Microsoft? If Harmony takes "the lead" - will it be possible that it can be taken to court by Sun? Or is it simly because of the monopoly market situation that Microsoft is and were in?
I'll say it again. Fedora will always be buggy, unstable and untested. That is what it was designed to do, serve as a community testing ground for products and services that may or may not make it into the commercially supported enterprise editions.
Redhat themselves are very clear about this on the Fedora project page
Stop complaining about Fedora and get a tested, 'stable', desktop focussed distribution. Most importantly, stop encouraging those new to Linux to try it.
Simple - what happens if the platform goes away? What happens if microsoft moves away from .NET, and you want to move to a new platform (PowerPC for example). Hell, what happens if 20 years from now you find you need an old tool you made in C#? Will it still work? Will there be a compatible .NET run-time for 256-bit computers?
Part of the commercial reason to use opensource is to future-proof yourself against long-term eventualities like this. If Java decides to stop letting you bundle the JVM with your OS, then you can't provide OpenOffice anymore without paying them. If MS stops supporting a platform, then you're screwed if there's an unworkable bug and you're stuck on the platform.
Fundamentally, when you invest labour on designing products and infrastructure based on a closed-license platform, you gain fealty to them. They now control you - they can make you lose the use of the product of your labour. They can stop providing their product, they can refuse to fix un-workaround-able bugs, or they can just go out of business and leave you high and dry.
With opensource, you can lose your support provider, but you can never lose the platform - at worst, you may have to maintain it yourself.
Yes, you may even have a solid, bullet-proof contract with your provider - but what happens when they go out of business?
Grandparent said it, he (as well as many) support the Free Software philisophy, it's not the same thing as OpenSource (which is more a label aimed at entreprises).
Each and every free software activist want the opening of ALL source code, no matter if they're actually wanting to have a look at it. As one of many, I don't see any area where I woudln't free my code, but unlike some, I can understand that resources may be non-free (e.g, in a videogame, while the engine should be free, say dual licenced GPL / and commercial licence for the company to make some money, like MySQL, I understand that graphics and creation, music, could be non-free). It doesn't mean music, art in general shouldn't be free but it always depends on your business model.
So to say, Free software isn't about the ability of the user to fix a bug. It's not about users at all, in fact. It's about the software itself, and its freedom. This is why we talk about philosophy when it comes to free software, since it is a movement of idea, whereas opensource is a business model that uses free software (and which was at first aimed at advertising free software).
Programming languages are not about being free. They're about being standards (good) or not (bad). People in the free software community want these languages *implementations* (ie compilers, libraries) to be free because some Linux distro (eg Debian) refuse to have non-free packages (at least in the main branch). See the Debian Social Contract.
Yeah because as we all know, IBM's never done anything for Java.
IBM's JVM is based on Sun's. They may be able to contribute bits and pieces, but certainly not the whole thing.
Have you ever programmed in java before? We're talking about the jvm/compiler/and core api. All 3 of these aspects are very well documented, and all 3 perform as they should. I challenge you to find a bug and if you do, I'm sure Sun will fix it. A certian open-source mentality doesn't apply here. Sun pays professional developers to develop java - you're not just going to run into bugs here and there that you could have easily fixed if it were open source. I love open source, use it everyday, and wish sun would release their code under a different license, but at least make a valid argument.
The source code for the Java API is available, but not with a Free license. It ships with every JDK. What's not available is the JVM source... at least, also not with a Free license. But I've been programming Java for years and rarely look at the API source, and have never needed the JDK source.