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Sun Says Java Source Already Available
mjdroner writes "In an InfoWorld article, Java CTO James Gosling says that source code for Java has been available for 10 years. Gosling claims Java is close to an open source model, though discounts Sun joining the Eclipse Foundation. He goes on to say that Eclipse's endorsement of the standard widget toolkit destroyed interoperability, saying it's based on the windows API, making it problematic to run on other platforms."
http://wwws.sun.com/software/communitysource/j2se/ java2/download.html
All clear?
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
That's wrong. Just download the latest JDK. 1.5 or the 1.6 beta. Then double-click on SwingSet2.jar and try the demo. It's way faster than GNOME on the Linux machines I tried it on. And at least as fast if not faster than the Windows native widget set on at least some machines. Try it yourself. It really has come a long way since the early versions which were horribly slow.
Of course the source code is available, but you have to personnally agree to a restrictive license. This is why Sun Java is not easily available as the OpenBSD Makefile for 1.5 port shows:
That would be here under the SCSL or here under the JRL. Pick your license. For an explanation, go here. :P
Those who open their minds too far often let their brains fall out.
While I can understand Sun want to maintain control of the standard, they've got to open up the source. It sounds a little harsh considering .NET is not open at all (although MS do provide a reference version of their CLR), but it has to be done.
Sun needs every friend they can get and putting Java into every distribution of Linux is one very good way to make a lot of friends. That means opening it up. Naturally they'd be frightened of some bastardized FrankenJava appearing, but they would still maintain the standards and the trademarks and they could enforce them. Who knows, perhaps opening the source will stimulate the platform once more.
Another way of stimulating the platform is to embrace Eclipse & SWT. Sun may hate to admit it, but Swing sucks. It's a very nice and flexible API but in practice it sucks. Swing apps run with the grace and speed of a slug. Swing apps look weird even when attempting to look native. At least bundle SWT with the JRE and let people decide which to use. SWT has it's faults too, but it sure as hell transforms the UI experience of Java apps. Aside from SWT I cannot fathom why they won't embrace Eclipse. Eclipse makes Java development easy. The platform has been cursed with crappy tools (especially GUI editors) for too long and it will have to pull its socks up if it wants to compete with Visual Studio.
At least on my machine under Linux, Swing is definitely faster than SWT. Sounds almost absurd, but is true. I did a search some time ago and found posts claiming that IBM's official positions was that they were not interested in improving the speed of SWT-GTK. They can kiss my a** then :-)
SWT-FOX (http://swtfox.sourceforge.net/) looks like a good idea and is supposed to be faster, but I have never been able to get it to work satisfactory (font problems, crashes). AFAIK, it is being maintained by a single person in his free time. Perhaps RedHat or Novel should support the project.
Don't get me started on SWT anyway - I think the design is terrible; it looks like a somewhat cleaner port of MFC.
You do need to "register" with Sun to get the source, but same goes even for New York Times... The registration is free.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"Open source" is not software where the source code is freely available. It software where you can obtain the source code provided you agree to a license. That license specifies that you must make any changes to that source code available to anybody else who agrees to the same license. - This is not true. An open source licenses is one that lets you freely copy, distribute, and merge the code into your own projects. There are a number of open source licenses that do not attach themselves to derivative works, such as the Berkeley and MIT licenses (which are even freer than the GPL, in the sense that they have fewer strings attached)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
These issues are fixed in Java 1.6 (Mustang), due out Real Soon Now.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
One thing that seems to get glossed over in the "SWT is optimized for Windows" argument is that SWT *is* open source.
IBM put a whole lot of time and energy into optimizing for Windows because it allows them to sell WebSphere studio for Windows. Optimizing for other platforms isn't cost effective, so they didn't do it. But what they did do is release the source, so someone with expertise on other platforms can pick up the ball and run with it and, when it passes all the tests, be merged back into the main eclipse source tree. The extensive tests are key in facilitating this process.
If SWT were to be included in the JRE, I think you'd see at least Apple (who distribute their own JRE anyways) spend sigificant effort in making SWT performant on OS X. I don't think its unreasonable to think that such an effort wouldn't be organized for Linux as well. But as long as SWT is just "that Eclipse thing", these efforts won't happen.
My one quibble with what the GP said is the "SWT is what Swing should have been" comment. SWT wasn't designed to be what Swing tries to be. It was designed to be much less OS abstracted. Much of the ugliness of the underlying OS filters through into SWT (widgets requiring parent composites, requiring developers to call dispose, requiring developers to update widgets via syncExec and asyncExec). JFace, on the other hand, is much more comparable to Swing. It burries much of the ugliness of SWT and presents a much cleaner interface to the developer. It's a shame that the people at Eclipse chose to create only an SWT download and an RCP download and not a JFace + SWT download.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"