Sun to Change Java License for Linux

daria42 writes "It looks like the days of downloading Java every time you re-install a Linux box may be at an end. Reports are trickling in that Sun plans to alter the Java license to make it easier to bundle the JRE with Linux. From the article: 'Sun has faced calls several times to open-source Java, which advocates say would foster innovative open-source development. The company has resisted formally open-sourcing all of the Java software, but it has dramatically changed the development process around Java and changed licenses to make it easier to see Java source code.'"

Comments

slackware has jre in 10.2?

[Edzor]

not sure about pervious versions of slack, but 10.2 ISO has it, i dont see the problem way other distro dont include it?

jre-1_5

Re:slackware has jre in 10.2?

[Ash-Fox]

Mandriva Linux includes Sun's JRE5 too.

Sun's commitement?

[SWroclawski]

I remember hearing about two or three weeks ago that Sun said it was committed to "Open Sourcing all of its software, everything they make."- this is from LugRadio and a Sun representative.

Given this /very/ progressive stance, I don't see why they're stalling when it comes to Java.

If anything, this slows Java adoption.

Java was all the rage in the late 90s. Had they made it Free, I think it would have been a tour de force. Now we see competition from simpler technologies. We're learning that we don't need a J2EE infrastructure when a simple Model-View-Controller model with a database backend will do the job just as well, and so on.

Freeing Java would spread adoption, if nothing else than by including it in every distribution shortly thereafter.

This new license system isn't good enough, it'll just frustrate people.

Java as electricity

[aphaenogaster]

Odd analogy, but I guess it kind of makes a little sense maybe... http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/04/sun-microsystems- schwartz-cz_ec_0504schwartz.html?partner=yahootix In shwartz's words...

Forbes:

You're trying to woo customers with free hardware. How do you make them paying customers? You haven't monetized Java proportional to what's out there.
JShwartz:

That's a misnomer. Largely an American misnomer. Nearing 1 billion Java handsets.

Forbes:

So what's your Java revenue?

JS:

Close to $13 billion.

F:

That's not money in Sun's pocket, though.

JS:

It's like asking a company that produces generators how much of their demand comes from people using electricity. It's 100 percent.

F:

But it's about how many customers are paying you for the privilege of using Java.

S:

And I'll point out that a billion handsets fuels an enormous market in the telecommunications industry. Java running on Sun's Java Enterprise system, whether it's at American Express or General Electric or Vodafone, is fueling Sun's overall revenue. Asking us how much money we make on Java is like asking Verizon Communications how much money they make on handsets. The fact is that they lose a fortune on handsets, but they make a fortune in subscribers.

F:

So are you going to convert Java users to subscription service for Sun?

S:

Partially, we're already doing that. American Express runs on the Java Enterprise system. That's per employee subscription for core middleware for Sun. My broader point is that Java ensures Sun has access to an open market. Java allows us to reach out to customers who don't run on Sun hardware and ensure we can serve them wherever they may be--whether it's on a Dell box or HP box or in an IBM customer base.

Again, it's hard to explain to people. Here's an analogy. With the advent of electricity, Thomas Edison tried to patent a lightbulb so that you would have to use his lightbulbs if you used his dynamo. That strategy obviously failed. And what emerged was the standard plug. Asking Sun the value of Java is like asking GE--which is, I think, the largest manufacturer of power turbines in the world--what the value of the standard plug is. It ensures they can serve a global marketplace. So if you asked them what's the value of the plug, how would they respond?

Here are some stats on Java: There are more than 1 billion Java cards in the marketplace, securing everything from set-top boxes to handsets. There are more than a billion Java handsets, all driving demand for network infrastructure. There are nearly 1,000 members of the Java community process, who collectively contribute to the standard called "Java." It is the default standard for set-top boxes in Brazil. So what will the infrastructure opportunity be in Brazil to serve 100 million Java-enabled set-top boxes? I promise you it will be enormous, and Sun will be among many participants that can serve that demand.

I wish Java was more like CPAN

[johnnnyboy]

The more I hear calls that Java to be more open source the more I wish all these Java libraries worked like the way CPAN does.

CPAN is great and its what keeps Perl relevant and it works well for the Perl community. All these java libraries bundled with the JDK should be more modular with a lean core distro and then the rest can be organized and installed as modules.

And like everything CPAN all these modules will be peer reviewed by other Java developers in the open source and corporate worlds.

Ah, one can only dream.

I'd Be Happy

[Greyfox]

If they'd just fix some broke-ass things about the language. Seems like every time I run up against a limitation in the language, I find a bug open from 1998 complaining about the problem and either closed wontfix or "We'll fix that in a future release of java" and then they don't.

Three recent thorns in my side:

The Process object's destroy method sends a SIGINT or some such rot to the child process, which may or may not kill the child process. There's no way to send a SIGKILL, no way to get the PID of the process, no way to set the process group and no way to get or kill children of the child process.

There's no way to get OS-Specific permission settings on a File. For that reason if you try to archive some files in Java using an InputStream that takes Files, you'll lose the permissions settings on them and the files will restored with something both generic and useless like 644. They make a halfhearted attempt to address this in 1.5, but it's still useless.

It would appear that the only way to get disk space left on the volume is to open a file and start writing 1 byte at a time until you get an IO Exception.

It's deficiencies like this (And the ~50MB VM overhead) that make Java a poor choice for system programming tasks, but the robustness of the language design itself could be so easily changed to address these issues. The fact that it hasn't and that all of these issues have been around for over half a decade lead me to believe that Sun isn't really serious about the language and probably shouldn't be in charge of the standard, either.