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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."
Mr. Gosling, please offer us a link to the code.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Swing is a bloated, slow piece of shit.
That is all.
Then where is it, behind a door that says "Beware of Leopard"?
Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
Swing is a joke. It doesn't look native, it is a resource hog, it doesn't even have clear type. Swing has only been complete in its next version that is always yet to come.
Java's language features were updated only when it got some competition from C#. The only harm that SWT has done it keeping the Swing development team on its toes.
Eclipse has shown that the market can indeed rally around Java optimized for Windows. Prior to SWT, remember running Together on cutting edge hardware, and the windows would still take 30 seconds to refresh? No one would tolerate the idea of running Java on Windows for Java's sake, when native apps absolutely destroyed Java apps in UI speed comparisons.
It's time for the theoretical niceties of interoperability to meet the practical demands of customer acceptance within the Windows market.
I don't undersyamd anything! I post on slahsdot~!
http://www.sun.com/software/communitysource/j2se/j ava2/download.xml
The article seems to have gone down before it could be mirrored, but there is an article on the same story here.
It doesn't really seem to explain WTF they think they mean, or what they've been taking. Is there somewhere where I can just download the Java source code, modify it, and distribute it, or do I need special permission and a weird license? That's not open source. If that's what they meant by their promise to open source everything, they lied.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Nice.
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
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.
...it's Cocoa! : D
(burn, karma, burn!)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Is the licensing still restrictive? If that is the case, it doesn't really matter for most of us.
Wow! I found this with little problem:
class myfirstjavaprog
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
System.out.println("Hello World!");
}
}
Oh, isn't that what you're looking for?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I enjoy scrolling up and down 15,000 line source code files as much as the next guy. That's why it's so much fun to look at the GCC sources.
/.'d at the moment.
Occasionally, it's actually useful to see how someone implemented something, for educational purposes.
But can I modify it, make it work on my new OS and processor and sell it without paying royalties? Maybe, distribute it under the GPL so it can come with FOS OS' in a truly free sense?
Having source code isn't everything. Back in the old days, there was always source code for everything; UNIX on any of twelve or so different platforms wasn't binary compatible, but source compatible. So if you wanted to make a program and sell it, like PeachTree (yeah it's that old), you HAD to distribute the source code. Otherwise, you'd either have to distribute dozens of different binaries or stick with a single platform, which wasn't profitable.
It was copyright infringement to make money by changing the code and selling it... and you couldn't give any of it away to someone who didn't have a license to it. And even if you did make modifications, you couldn't use them when the next release came out unless you ported them over each time.
There's a difference between something being OpenSource and just having the source. Even if it's a free product like Java.
What can you legally do with it? What separates it from being truly open source? I'd read the article, but it seems
While Java will be around for decades to come due to the current investment in Java-based enterprise infrastructure, it is currently being sent to the end of the line when it comes to new development.
Dynamic languages like Ruby, Python, and Smalltalk are starting to become widely used for many web-based applications. Even for desktop applications they are becoming a viable alternative, as they often offer greater portability than Java, with a far smaller runtime, and with better performance. All these licensing issues associated with Java just do not exist for such languages.
We are also seeing a trend towards the use of functional languages like Scheme, Haskell, Erlang, and Ocaml for development that would have been done in Java. Many have suggested that these functional languages (or ones derived therefrom) will become the most widely used languages in the near future.
Such people predict that the dynamic languages will rapidly overtake Java, but will run into problems due to their use of weak, dynamic typing (ie. leading to unacceptable runtime typing errors). Strongly and statically typed languages like Haskell will alleviate these problems, even if at the expense of some flexibility.
Regardless, there are bright times ahead for some of today's most innovative languages.
The src is out in the open alright, but it's still under a proprietary license, so you'd better stay the hell away if you're ever likely to work on something similar. *Insert rant about how the term Free Software is better than open source here*. When we used Digital Unix at work many years ago, we had source code access, but that still didn't make it free in any sense.
This is great news, I always wanted to remove that pesky garbage collector....
Just a second. I know the Java sources have been available for a long time in src.zip. I've consulted it many-a-time. But what about the native code? You know, the actual runtime itself, and all the C code that goes behind all those "native" methods in the Java runtime? Is that code available now too? That's the code you'd really need access to in order to port the JRE to a new platform.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Particularly:
So is Skerrett being disengenous when he says that and, if he is, is he just getting back at Gosling for over simplifying?
Somehow I really doubt that Gosling doesn't understand how Eclipse works in the context and I doubt that Skerrett is dumb enough to think that he does, though I'm less sure of the second point as I don't know anything about him.
You can make an argument that SWT leveraging OS-specific APIs is a strength, although I don't really like Eclipse under GTK (need to try it with Motif), but I would have preferred it if he had just rebutted the point directly without stooping to slurs.
Actually, I have no earthly idea where I got these expectations all of a sudden. It's like I relapsed into freshman naiveté. "All debates should be logical and factual. Then the Internet will be one big Web of Peace."
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
"It's been there for years," Sun CTO Ned Baker replied, "just grep your /java/bin directory for the string 'malloc(all);' and you'll find it."
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Java is not the Java Development Kit, or any other specific peice of software. To Sun, "Java" is a trademark, so they can't even use it as a noun. But the rest of us can get by with thinking of Java as a collection of specifications: the Java language, the Java class libraries, and the Java VM spec. None of these is software — software can only be a implementation of Java.
That might seem like a silly distinction, until you remember that Sun is not the only vendor for Java implementations. Not only are there commercial implementations, but there are open source implementations of all three, specs. Of course, these all lag way behind commercial implementations, as open source clones are wont to do.
Anyway, when people say "Sun should open-source Java" what they really mean is "Sun should open-source their implementation of Java."
Which brings us to:
"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.
And here's a non-legal issue: if you're serious about making your product open-source, you don't just throw the source code over the wall and say "go crazy!" You make a serious attempt to fold contributed code back into your main source tree. That's a serious administrative cost, and a big reason so many companies are unwilling to OS their products.
How open does Java licensing need to be?
Answer: Open enough that the most important Linux distributions will include Java.
It is correct that Java is close to being FOSS, but that makes it even more the pity that Sun could not make the few adjustments needed to attain this goal.
Sun should by now be over the trauma of Microsoft attempting to hijack Java and accept things like SWT as the kind of sideshow that the Ubuntu/Kubuntu thing is.
I wrote parts of this stuff
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.
Although Sun has been generous with their source and created great opportunities for clever developers, Java has generated the need for a new cross platform OO language. The decision to implement generisity using type erasure has irrepairably damaged the run-ime integrity of the language. This will become more and more apparent as people become better aquanted with the new specification. Hopefully the open source community will build on the experience gained through working with Java to create a new truly type safe cross-platform OO language. If not... all hail .NET chime... chime... rattle.
that was true at the time of java 1.1 or nowadays with a very beginner programmer. any application using swing (using the current OS look and feel) behaves in a very similar speed as a delphi app. if u can make a good optimized assembly code, good, but that is not what the market wants. The market wants "developer performance" (speed in the coding process),interoperability and application performance in this order.
Yes, Java is opensource.
In fact you can get the source code, if you accept to sign a licence restricting you to distribute a modified version or reuse the code elsewhere.
So basicaly: the source is availabile (it's opensource) but not reusable freely (it's not free software).
Sun executives often do this confusion when interpreting the F/OSS calls for a free java.
Meanwhile, linux distributors don't make the same mistake: that's why (java being considered non-free) you won't find the Sun jdk/jre in the redistributed medias of Debian, Fedora Core, OpenSuse or Ubuntu (and *BSD, even).
Somebody! Please over there at Sun!!! Do not give that grass to Gosling "The Father of Java" anymore!!!! Or my heart would definitely break.
"Java is already open source for 10 years" and "Eclipse destroyed interoperability" is... *NO* *COMMENTS*.
Sun for last ten years - and 6 versions of Java - jumped from one application field to another. Sun's lack of the focus - and Gosling sayings confirm that lack - is sole reason for the problems of Java. Companies just can't trust Sun at that point. (*)
Eclipse claims are just plainly laughable. And in fact one of the most spoken problems of Java and Sun's control over Java. Since Java slowly moved to server side of computing, Sun payed less and less attention to the one simple thing - GUI. There is no standard Java GUI API. Period. People tried what is shipped with Java SDK - AWT & Swing - shivered and moved on. Plainly unusable. In fact, I do not know single successful Java GUI application which uses Java's native GUI toolkits. Eclipse foundation just did what it had to - filled the gap. Now we have GUI toolkit. Which is quite performant, usable on Windows/Linux/BSD/Mac. And people are pretty happy about it. Even me. And many applications already use it (Azureus as an example pops up in my head). Check the http://www.eclipse.org/swt/community.php for more.
P.S. Original article includes the pointer that Sun's planing to try assault on embedded space again. Good Luck Gosling. You freaking need it.
(*) My company wanted to standartize of Java, but backed off the plans. Middle management wanted Java for its stable and rich development environment. R&D manager flat out refused since Java is in fact closed source and there is no sence in adding another dependency to the already huge software package we have. And nobody can assure us what Sun will do tommorow - what if they drop support for M$ Windows?? There is *no* competing Java implementations. And there is no standard for Java.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
When Java 6 is released, Swing will use native drawing on all supported platforms. This means under Linux, your swing apps will blend right into your gnome desktop (at least as much as SWT anyway) and on Windows I doubt any user could now distinguish a Swing app from a native app. Sun has put a lot of energy into making Swing fast and good-looking, now that the supporting Java class framework is mature.
In fact, with Java 6 it is hard to find any compelling reason at all to build SWT apps instead of just using Swing. SWT apps are not portable without bundling specific dlls for each platform. Further SWT isn't even that great of a framework, but it has worked well for what it was made for, eclipse.
So please stop spouting this continued FUD about how bad swing is. Yes it was horrible in the past and looked like the ugly step-child. But with Java 6 Swing is poised to be a good candidate for serious desktop java use. Even a couple of years ago, Apple's customizations to Swing illustrate that Swing was capable of being a first-class GUI citizen. Apple bundles a number of Java apps that are wrapped in a nice app bundle and no one would ever know there were Java rather than some native binary.
The parent is a troll (possibly an IBM troll).
Sun paid tons of money and spent years writing the class libraries. Why should they give their work away for free? They license this code to IBM, Oracle and BAE for a significant sum. Why should they give up this revenue?
Sun has changed the licensing for the JRE to allow it to more easily be integrated into Linux distros. The parent is either ignorant of that fact or deliberately omitting it.
Sun is less likely to maintain to maintain the standard if they open source the code. What kind of ass backasswards reasoning is this?
Why embrace SWT? This is IBM's attempt to bastardize the JDK. What's more, it's not pure Java. For instance, when I bought my Intel iMac, NetBeans 5.0(pure Java Swing) worked immediately, whereas an SWT library needed to be replaced for Eclipse. Why should Sun integrate a less than fully platform independent competitor's attempt to break a standard?
See this blog for more analysis on SWT vs Swing:
http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t18544.html
The jury is out on whether SWT is technically superior to Swing.
If you think Eclipse makes Java development easy, you obviously haven't used NetBeans 5.0, which is significantly superior to Eclipse in every way. It includes functionality out of the box (JSP compilation) that you need to pay for (MyEclipse) with Eclipse.
You obviously have an IBM bias with the following stated positions:
1) Open Source Java so IBM doesn't have to license class library source from Sun.
2) SWT should be included in JDK, thus polluting the standard.
3) Eclipse is the best IDE and makes developing Java "easy", with no mention whatsoever of the clearly superior NetBeans 5.0, or, for that matter, IntelliJ.
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only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and if I'd wanted to hear from an asshole I would have farted.
as those non gay, Sh1theads. *BSD
All softwares has license oneway or another. Click on accept or not, you have to accept the license to use the software (binary or source). If someone call Java license is propriatary, then I think GPL is not only propriatary to one developers, but millions developers out there.
I cannot sell GPL software, cannot include it in my own software. So, go with the comparison.
For those think I am trolling, here are some reasons:
1) You cannot sell GPL software, you can only charge for distribution of it.
2) You cannot include it in my own software, unless I make my own software GPL, which either means
a) For those think GPL is non-proprietary: it's no longer "mine" in a sense that anyone can take it, change it, and charge for it, or
b) I donot make it open source and distribute it and violate GPL, which means GPL has millions of strings from every developers out there who put work into it. or
c) I cannot redistribute my software, which means my work is only useful for me. What a waste most of time, and poor economic model.
If you were talking about JVM's there are "competing implementations" please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual
And perhaps when you were speaking of 'no standard for Java' you forgot to look into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Community_Proce
Why no Obj-C love man?? ;)
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
"UNIX on any of twelve or so different platforms wasn't binary compatible"
With all due respect, that's pure utter rubbish. ATT System V UNIX for the 386 PC's WERE binary compatible. This was distributed, and modified, by Microport, ESIX, Bell Tech, and others. And it was put on different types of platforms, not just the IBM PC (Cubix was one, Intel's Tahoe box was another; and there were others whose name I forget).
They were ALL binary compatible. People could, and did, run the same applications on different i386 platforms. The changes were kept to the kernel level, and were mostly driver changes. But at the user level, the libraries and binaries were all compatible.
Anything which deviated from ATT's standard wouldn't work. But then, according to ATT, you couldn't call that UNIX.
MVC
Swing pretty much forces you to use it whether it's appropriate or not.
I have no problems with SWT-using apps like Eclipse and Azureus on GNU/Linux for either x86 or x86-64.
I remember, about 10 years ago, when they started to allow people to download the source. It was all very exciting. I downloaded it and made a futile attempt to build it on UnixWare. The build environment from what I recall is atrocious. So anyway, I've always been like "wtf" when I hear stories about opening up Java source, wondering if the whole thing was just a dream.
As an everyday user of Swing apps (and specifically jEdit) I assure you that under Java 5 Swing apps *do* look native enough. I have to strain my eye to find very slight differences. Note that many native win32 apps alter their look and feel uch more, "to stand out", probably. Opera on win32 looks less "native" than most Java apps, and newer MSO apps always keep going for some new and rather alien (though cool) look and feel.
Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes
Not quite so clear.
It's under a license that's not really an Open Source or Free license. The same goes for things like the Java Media Framework- something that could be useful and allow some rather nifty VoIP applications, etc. but is languishing because Sun's the only one that can legally extend it.
Yes, the source is available, but few, if any can really honestly USE it like one can with Linux, GCC, etc.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
What language is it written in ? Thanks.
Thanks for trying, but as it's already been pointed out, open source licenses don't tend to place any restrictions on obtaining or using the code. You need only to agree to the license in order to redistribute.
The GPL goes so far as to explicitly state as much.
Anyhow, on to your main point, I think most people around here believe that having a complete, open source implementation of the latest version of the Java specs would be extremely beneficial to Java and the Java community as a whole. So, we can't quite understand why Sun is engaging in stupid double-talk instead of trying in earnest to make that happen. Obviously, the easiest way would be to open source their existing implementation.
The oft-stated idea that Sun's refusal to contribute is somehow protecting "write once, run anywhere" is simply ridiculous. First of all, that whole notion is pure fiction because new APIs are always being added to the platform. Any code that exploits a new API won't run on an older runtime. And now, with Java 5.0, it's even worse, as, by default, javac produces bytecode that won't run on a 1.4 JVM, regardless of what platform APIs are used.
Meanwhile, because of the Sun's license terms, most Linux distributions are forced to pick up various open source implementations, none of which are not complete. Instead of getting help from the distributions in solving the problem of Java platform version dependencies, Sun has forced them to make whole situation much, much worse. Write once, cross your fingers, and hope for the best!
Trying to install and run Java applications ranges from a pain to a nightmare on every single platform. But, really, there's no good reason that I shouldn't be able to launch a Java application as easily as a native binary. Sun can't solve this problem themselves, but they do have the power to take away the roadblocks preventing it from being solved for them.
Does writing apps using the Cocoa windowing toolkit provide any substantial performance boost over SWT by chance? I'm seriously ignorant on the topic, and I only ask because it seems from my perspective that the Azureus Bit Torrent client on Mac OS X is a resource hog, not to mention very sluggish in launching. I would say the user interface is even somewhat unresponsive. I believe this application uses SWT, but I could be mistaken. Are Java apps in general just this way on Mac OS X, or are there benefits to be had by switching to a Cocoa Java implementation? Thanks.
according to the BCL you have no right to modify the files in the JRE and/or the JDK. Doing so automatically terminates your license for the JRE from Sun.
cheers,
dalibor topic
I'm a big Eclipse fan. I use it daily. I love it.
However, there are definitely little niggling problems based on it's close relationship with Windows. For example, the Windows clipboard is synchronous, therefore the SWT clipboard is synchronous. The X clipboard is asynchronous, which has caused lock up problems in the past (not present currently). There was a time when you couldn't have ':' in a filename because of the windowisms built in to handle window drive letters. Additionally, since the Eclipse folks seem to think that printing is a function of your widget set, there is still no printing for Eclipse on Linux (since GTK doesn't yet provide printing support).
So are non-Windows users slightly second class Eclipse citizens? Yes, but not by much, and to be honest, I generally don't notice it at all. Eclipse feels just as good to me on Linux as on Windows.
Heh. Of course, the Java bridge is now deprecated (with good reason; Java's lack of dynamism causes large impedence mismatches with ObjC). I'm hoping Apple officially adopts PyObjC as a replacement.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Thar she blows !
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
From my experience, you can't tell wether a Cocoa app is written in Objective C or Java (except in launch time), so there's definitely a difference to SWT.
What he meant was *some* source to *something* was available. For example, where's the source to the binary module that implements Adler32? What? Java has binary code linked into it? And yes, I'm still waiting for a complete/official specification of what Java and the JVM actually is. Come to think of it, I've been waiting 10 years.
Java developers, meanwhile, want to preserve interoperability and reliability, which is maintained by the current rules governing Java, Gosling said. To be certified as Java-compliant, software most undergo a test suite.
"They really like the fact that we're very compulsive about the whole testing thing," Gosling said.
Exactly. I think that the people calling for Java to be open sourced don't get the concept. Honestly, I think they must all be either people who are against java just because they have a platform they prefer (A very common occurrence among engineers) or they are trying to destroy the advantages of Java (Simplicity, slow and deeply considered addition of new features, compatibility) in order to make it easier to sell a competing product.
The fact is, nothing will be gained from open-sourcing Java that you can't get by evolving the existing license (for instance, sun is modifying it to be able to ship the JDK with other products). On the other hand, much will be lost. Sun has been a creator and beneficial guardian of this language, and has crafted it into something that many users just love.
Now, many people don't need Java. For instance, if you are making a smallish website, you are just stupid if you try to use java--use ROR or
However, if you have a project with an architect, a handful of software engineers and dozens of programmers working on a huge code base at the same time I don't think you can pick a better platform.
If you are not in java's target audience, please SHUT THE HELL UP about it having to be open source. You don't have to feel bad about java not being appropriate for you! I give you permission to go use a scripting type of tool and solve your problem much quicker, but don't try to mold my favorite tool into something that fits your job just because it has a cool name and you think you should be using it because everyone else is.
Those of us who really need java like it pretty much as it is--slow intelligent improvements, fewer terse, confusing or overloaded language features and a large number of users more interested in making readable/reusable code (as opposed to the users who just want to get the job done with write-once code). Overall it's just a good, solid, readable language, leave it at that.
I don't know about using Swing to build a really resource-intensive application, but for simple data visualization apps, it works just fine. I have written a couple of data visualization apps where you drag a cursor over a drawing and things drag/compute/update, and I have not complaints about the quality of the graphics and the speed of the updates. I can't see writing the type of in-house apps in VB anymore. The one big hangup is the layout manager. It takes some learning curve to understand what it is all about, it takes more learning curve to know how to do layout in NetBeans because the layout is not like VB and will confuse the heck out of you (although the new NetBeans has this new flow layout thingy, I am sticking to the conventional layouts for max portability), and layout takes an awful lot of fiddling to get what you want. Swing may not be the fastest, but it is fast enough for my lab data visualization apps, and it is portable to Windows/Linux/OS X as well.
Sun paid tons of money and spent years writing the class libraries. Why should they give their work away for free?
...which is significantly superior to Eclipse in every way.
They're under no obligation to, no doubt. But neither was IBM under any obligation to release the code for SWT, Eclipse, Derby and others. IBM has stepped up and released code under an open source license. As a programmer, I like working in Java far more than I do working in C#. For that reason, I want Java to become as ubiquitous as possible. Opening up the source would go a long way towards making that happen.
Why embrace SWT? This is IBM's attempt to bastardize the JDK.
Bzzt. Wrong. SWT was created in response to criticisms of Swing and AWT on the part of developers. Developers wanted an API that was easy enough to use and made their apps look native. AWT failed the first part, and if Swing ever does meet the second criteria, it will be because SWT pushed it to do so. And if you don't like working in SWT, try JFace. It is designed to be developer friendly and is, IMHO, much easier to develop in than Swing.
SWT was originally written long before Swing or AWT were anything but laughable. If you're going to bash SWT, do it on its merits (there are some), but to claim that IBM was trying to do anything besides solving a serious problem for developers just isn't true.
What's more, it's not pure Java.
So is AWT. It's included in the JRE. If SWT were included in the JRE, developers wouldn't have to care that it isn't pure Java.
Like the way that Eclipse had support for Java 5 language changes almost a year before NetBeans? For a company that is steering the direction of the language spec, that's pretty bad. This kind of absolute statement shows more than anything else that you know very little about this subject. You've probably given Eclipse a cursory glance, decided that it isn't NetBeans, and decided it was shit because you couldn't grok its way of doing things. Of course the fact that every IDE forces you to adapt to its way of doing things and requires a substantial time investment in order to be able to use it well. I've spent considerable time using NetBeans, IDEA and Eclipse. And each time, the process of learning the new IDE was a serious pain. Welcome to the real world. Spend more than 5 minutes with Eclipse and you'll realize that it does a ton of stuff better than NetBeans and a bunch of stuff poorer than NetBeans.
it includes functionality out of the box (JSP compilation) that you need to pay for (MyEclipse) with Eclipse.
Wow...that's functionality that takes all of 5 minutes to setup using Ant. That's all NetBeans is actually doing anyways. Of course if my build script is called build.xml (like > 90% of them are), NetBeans can't use it.
Meanwhile, when it comes to truly necessary features, like AspectJ, NetBeans has no support. By the simple lack of AspectJ support, NetBeans would go from superior in every way to unusable.
So somehow advocating that Sun follow IBM's lead is simply IBM's being selfish. Advocating that Sun give developers the option to write SWT apps is IBM polluting "the standard" (which is only the standard because Sun says so). And so those of need our apps to look native have to bundle SWT with our apps. Thanks, Sun, for keeping the standard so pure(ly unusable)!
Yeah, I'm replying to a (Sun) troll...He probably also believes that EJBs scale...
See, this is what Gosling is apparently missing. Whether the source code is theoretically available or not, the open source community is never going to be happy about a license that's so restrictive it even dictates what command line arguments you are allowed to use when running the software.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
> Exactly. I think that the people calling for Java to be open sourced don't get the concept.
On the contrary, I think it's you who doesn't get the concept! I like (for example) OpenBSD because they're very compulsive about the testing. Yet they are open source! No one is asking for Java-the-language to change! Or the development model. Java can continue to be developed and husbanded by Sun just fine, even if it's open source. All we are asking for is the right to control our own machines IF PROBLEMS ARISE! And the right for our vendors to provide better integration--even those of us who use open-source-only vendors!
There seems to be a large segment of the population who think that being "open source" means that anyone can modify the code and stick in whatever they want. Well, guess what--that's STUPID! Sure, Joe Blow could, in theory, make his own weirdo variant of Java, but WHO WOULD USE IT? If Sun's version is indeed as good as you claim, nobody is going to want any third-party variants! Whether or not it's open source! Microsoft might try to make an incompatible version? Here's some news for you--THEY ALREADY DID, and they named it C#!
Java being open-sourced is unlikely to have any impact on the language or how its developed. So, why do we care? Because having it be open-sourced is the ONLY WAY that it will EVER be included with and supported by Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, the BSDs, etc., etc., and many of us use those systems on a daily basis! And we see no sign (based on all the software included with those systems) that there would be any possible downside to an open-source Java.
So, please take your straw men and your red herrings and go peddle them elsewhere!
Okay, let's do a comparison:
* Swing: cross platform
* SWT: cross platform
* Cocoa: not crossplatform
Hmm, this is a hard choice...
We already have a typesafe OO language: Ocaml. You can read more about it at ocaml.org.
Those of us in the know have been using it for years for very significant applications. Besides offering native compilation on most popular UNIX platforms and Windows, it also offers a bytecode interpreter. The performance of both is superb.
You're taking my post way too seriously...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Ahem and what pretell is the c-cdoe in Awt based on perchance?? Give you a guess Unix, Windows, andother platform windows toolkit apis.. Gosling should know better thanb to spout off PR bullshit.. SWT is not based on Widnows UI kits as it plugs into not windows UI kits but systme apis.. instead..
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
Why no love for Obj-C? 'Cause it was a discussion about Java, of course!
Also, I've never done any programming for the Mac (except for UNIX console apps in C), so I have no idea what I'm talking about anyway. I was just trying to be funny.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I think the big mistake Sun has is that it is confusing what people mean by open source. When someone says open source they mean not only is the code fully open source but you can change it, redistribute it, and even submit patches to Sun. If you look at http://www.sun.com/software/communitysource/j2se/j ava2/download.xml you will see a few files for the Java souce code. One is simple labeled "JSCSL Source" but another is labeled "SCSL Binaries - needed to complete source build" so Java isnt fully open source. The first thing they need to do is make it so I can download just the source, with no binaries, and compile it on any OS/arch mixure I want. The second thing they need to do is change the license just a bit so that I can redistribute the source code on my own. I think most people would be fine with Sun making their own license that says you must say it isnt the offical Sun Java if you choose to redistribute it. I think right now Sun's big problem is that they dont want something stupid that you do effect Java's reputation.
On a related note: would anybody know if IBM's rendition of Java is open sourced?
Your knowledge in this matter is obviously lacking.
With respect to programming languages, 'dynamic' and 'static' are oft used to describe when typechecking takes place. Many languages, like Java, offer some degree of both. Static typing is when the datatypes of variables, arguments, etc., are determined and verified at compile time. Dynamic typing is when such information is determined at runtime.
The very least you could do at this time is go to Wikipedia, and read up on such things. At least then you'll understand what is being said here. Of course, there are also many textbooks available that cover these topics, but frankly I don't think you're at a level of understanding to even begin to comprehend them.
I don't know why you're talking about scope. It has nothing to do with this topic whatsoever.
And your analysis of dynamic languages is completely mistaken. In many dynamic languages you do have to take care to convert data of different types into compatible forms in a correctly-functioning program. Basically, everything you said in that paragraph is incorrect.
The main problem with dynamic typing is that you could easily (without warning from the compiler or interpreter) pass the string "Hello" to a function or method that takes an integer. At least with a statically typed langauge, such a mistake would be caught by the language implementation, and you'd have to manually override it (ie. with a type conversion function, a cast, etc.). If such an error is in a codepath that is called infrequently, you may very well never find the error until you have shipped the software. Nothing sickens a customer more than finding such bugs. And any developer who is responsible for such easily avoided issues should be ashamed.
It was not suggested that Java nor C were immune from runtime type errors. Indeed, any language that allows casting opens itself up to problems. A language like Haskell does not allow such reckless behavior, and as such is far safer. Typing errors are always caught at compile time, not at runtime.
In any case, you are obviously quite confused about the differences between statically typed and dynamically typed languages. Please read up on these subjects further, before you make a fool out of yourself again.
Unmiserly but teething Beast It is Twisting and seething And of discordant beliefs Oh a wonder! Or haphazard miracle I don't mind all the parentheses But standards from commercialism should have died in the 80's.
I worked with IBM Object Technologies Inc, the original author of the Standard Windowing Toolkit when Eclipse was so new that they wouldn't even release test copies to developers working with IBM and OTI. SWT originated as a layer that OTI was using for implementing a cross platform compatability layer to allow porting AWT and Swing to mobile platforms to be easy.
The fact is, since I have extensive experience working on SWT from porting it, I can clearly say that it definately was not a Windows based toolkit in anyway. Long before hearing about Eclipse, SWT was already ported to many different platforms.
SWT had its problems. Even propagation was probably the most complex of them, but in reality, it was no more or less platform dependant than AWT itself. If you've ever read the code from Sun for AWT, you'd know that it was somewhat of a disaster. It was a nasty compatibility layer that instead of embracing platform differences, was minimized to remove the difference instead.
I have ported AWT to two windowing toolkits and frankly, time and time and time again, I found that the only practicle way of making AWT work on a new platform/windowing toolkit was to implement an SWT style GUI library in Java first, then build the AWT layer on top. This was also nasty in a way since it meant that it was extra important to make the new windowing toolkit not suffer the same incredible limitations that AWT itself did.
Also, let me make it perfectly clear, AWT and Swing, no matter how you skin them, they never integrate into the platform nearly as well as building on the native toolkits. SWT was the first widely used library that ever put an effort into recognizing that a Windows user is a Windows user, a KDE user is a KDE user, a GTK user is a GTK user, and a Mac user is a Mac user.
Sun should be bowing down and thanking IBM OTI for the creation of SWT, in fact, Sun should be rebuilding AWT and Swing on top of SWT since their own code base is so very limited in comparison.
Ha, nice! well...ya had me going there ;)
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
Well, Sun can surely do as they please, but that just means that .net is more likely than Java to end up on linux and solaris machines in the near future. If that is what Sun wants, then that's what will happen. Or why do you think mono popped up out of nowhere?
.NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix. Sponsored by Novell (http://www.novell.com), the Mono open source project has an active and enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications.
from the mono homepage:
Mono provides the necessary software to develop and run
Look, there is a munchillion people out there, that have learned Java at uni or at work.
These people just ache for releasing their open source project in all it's open source gloryness, and dreams of having it included in all the major GNU/Linux/FreeBSD/*nux distros.
This is an enormous potential, that is destoyed by not having a version of Java included in all open nuxes, by default, that is easy to work with and works as they expect. Not to speak of extremely security-minded companies, that only work with open source.
And, as long as Sun's Java isn't proper open source, it is not going to be their version of Java that's running everywhere.
Why Sun doesn't see that this is where the problem lies, not with the actual looking at sourcecode, beats me.