Sun to Release Java Source Code

pete314 writes "After resisting for years, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz at JavaOne this morning said that he will release the source code for Java. The company is asking developers to provide feedback on how to best get there and prevent forking and fragmentation."

Comments

Misleading Headline

[AKAImBatman]

"After resisting for years, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz at JavaOne this morning said that he will release the source code for Java.

BZZT! WRONG! Java source code has been available for YEARS! (And no, I'm not going to bother linking. If you don't already know where to find the SCSL and JRL licensed code by now, you need to pull your head out of your butt and Google it.)

This article is nothing but a blurb that suggests that Sun is looking at Open Sourcing Java. (What the Slashdot pundits have been screaming for, for years now.) Unfortunately, one of OSI's core requirements is forking. So Java will never be able to make the pundits happy. :-/

Re:Misleading Headline

[Coryoth]

Unfortunately, one of OSI's core requirements is forking. So Java will never be able to make the pundits happy.

Sure they can - there are other ways to pevent forking than in the license. Look at most of the major OSS projects around and you'll see that there is very little in the way of forking - sure minor forks exist but they quickly die. Sun doesn't care about some minor fork of Java that 20 people use that eventually dies, they are worried about a significant competing standard that honestly splits developers between two different platforms. How often has that happened with big OSS projects? Hardly ever. The question is not so much "what can be done to prevent forking" but "what happens that causes a successful fork". The major examples of significant splits in the OSS world would be Emacs/XEmacs, gcc/ecgs, and XFree86/Xorg. In each of those cases the reason for both the fork, and the success of the fork, comes down to the original project stagnating and being unresponsive to change. Avoid that and you tend to avoid significant forks.

Jedidiah.

Re:Misleading Headline

[AKAImBatman]

Sun doesn't care about some minor fork of Java that 20 people use that eventually dies

But they DO care about IBM or Microsoft creating a VM that advertises compatbility, but actually pulls the bait-and-switch routine. Remember, Microsoft already tried to pull that routine with the NON-OSS version of Java. It was the license that stopped them. This time, you can be sure that they would stay precisely inside the letter of the law. No Java trademarking, but no compatability testing either. Companies will start to rely on it for its Windows performance, and then Microsoft will start introducing subtle differences. Before you know it, users will blame Sun for being incompatible.

Re:Misleading Headline

[Coryoth]

But they DO care about IBM or Microsoft creating a VM that advertises compatbility, but actually pulls the bait-and-switch routine. Remember, Microsoft already tried to pull that routine with the NON-OSS version of Java.

Sure, but they will still own and control the Java trademark and they can simply bar such bait-and-switch advertising. Microsoft can fork Java all they want, they just can't call it Java, nor Java comnpatible. Besides MS is unlikely to do any such thing now since their efforts are heavily sunk into C# and .NET.

Jedidiah.

Re:Misleading Headline

[squiggleslash]

It depends on whether they prohibit or merely discourage forking. Indeed, Sun could even go the trademark route with some success, with only the official Sun Java, and specific licensees (such as creators of alternative Java implementations that conform to the spec) being allowed to use the trademark. This is compatible with the GPL. The fact you can't call your fork "Java" doesn't mean your freedom to change and distribute it has been affected.

There's a more interesting issue here. Sun Java is an embarassment to the OSI. Over the last few years, by using a community driven development process, Java has improved leaps and bounds. Essentially, Sun said "What the Open Source movement says is right, except for the freedom part". And given the OSI keeps being at pains to argue that it's merely a front for software freedom, trying to encourage the development of free software by promoting community-driven development processes which, supposedly, rely upon the software being developed to be Free, this really doesn't hasn't helped it much.

Essentially, the OSI says "We must have free software, because free software means a community of interested parties can develop a program to a much higher standard than would otherwise be the case if it was proprietary. We describe this whole thing as "Open Source"."

Sun responds with: "Aha! But Java isn't free, and it too is developed by a community of interested parties, and they've generated a much higher standard of product than would otherwise have been the case if it wasn't developed using a community process. So your argument fails because you don't need software to be free to use your "open source" development model!"

ESR responds with: "You all suck. Set Java free!!!1!"

So why's Sun "open sourcing" Java? I think they're just looking at ensuring the official Sun implementation has wider adoption, by removing licensing barriers. Free software licenses happen to be a great way to get there. Sun wants to get Java "out there", especially with .NET nipping at its heels. The real problem with Sun's strategy hasn't been forsaking the development model advantages of the OSI's "Open Source", it's been that it's harder to integrate the official Sun Java, the reference implementation, with the non-Java world, because of licensing issues.

And as such, I don't think Sun gives a rats arse what the OSI thinks.

FWIW, I wrote about this in my journal.

Re:Misleading Headline

[Coryoth]

Which interestingly enough took place between proprietary systems, not open ones. In that sense the UNIX wars are more akin to the battle between Java and C# and .NET (which could, indeed, be seen as damaging to the VM market). That is to say, regardless of what Sun does with Java they are already facing the same sorts of problems.

Jedidiah.

Re:Misleading Headline

[AKAImBatman]

what the "pundits" have been calling for is the source code to the virtual machine and the compiler

WindBourne! I'm shocked to hear such garbage from you!

Current "Stable" JVM - <= 1.5 (SCSL)

"Unstable" JVM Branch - 1.6 (JRL)

Every, (and I do mean every) story on Java here on Slashdot has contained one of those two links. Most of them contain BOTH. Why? Because the trolls come out in force. The fact that you didn't take the time to look into the matter (I believe I suggested Googling for it) is disappointing and disheartening. :-(

Re:Misleading Headline

[DragonWriter]

But they DO care about IBM or Microsoft creating a VM that advertises compatbility, but actually pulls the bait-and-switch routine.

One way to manage that risk might be to pull a page from the (oddly enough) pen & paper RPG world -- when Wizards of the Coast adapted the open source idea to those kind of games by releasing the core of D&D/3e under its Open Gaming License as the d20 System Reference Document, it faced similar concerns, so its content licenses requires surrendering rights that the user would otherwise have to, e.g., nominative fair use of trademarks, so that while you can make derivative works, you can't (except by complying with a more restrictive trademark license) advertise or promote them using "product identity" associated with D&D or the d20 System. Applying the same idea back to software wouldn't be that hard. OTOH, there is a limited degree to which you can exercise control over OSS -- that's rather the point.

Re:Misleading Headline

[FatherOfONe]

Ok, I will throw out an example.

Microsoft says "Great Sun open sourced Java". We will take it bundle it with windows, change all the underlying code so that it actually uses windows API's, remove anything that competes against our stuff like SWING, EJB's, Servlets, messaging API's et al, and make it so that our Java only runs on Windows, and even if you try to run a "normal" Java application , it will not work unless you change it to support com.microsoft.xxx libraries, and jump through a ton of hoops.

Now you and I would say that we would NEVER code to that, but the reality is that the management dorks out there would say that we would have to because it is on 95% of the worlds computers. Thus who really is the standard? It would be the defacto standard, much like IE is today. It sucks but it is the reality of the situation. Trust me, this has happened to me before and the best thing that EVER happened to our development staff was when Microsoft "dropped" support of Java. The management dorks had runs Sun's JVM and suddenly stuff started to work well and we could code to open standards, not Windows standards.

So, on one hand I hope that Sun does open source Java to shut up all the people bitching, but the last thing I want is IBM or Microsoft doing their own fork. I as a developer do not EVER want to have to change my code to run on some specific platform or JVM. If I wanted to do that I would code in C++. Heck it is open, and if peopl code to "standards" they can just port their apps with little trouble.... Oh wait that never really worked out did it?

The good news is that at the point Microsoft probably won't mess with Java, they have to worry about a bunch of other stuff, but that won't stop IBM.

Re:Misleading Headline

[Coryoth]

You throw out a couple of scare scenarios here with either Microsoft or IBM making a mess of Java, but as far as I can tell they are just that, wild scare scenarios that simply aren't viable if Sun is at all on the ball. For starters Sun can keep the Java trademark and simply bar Microsoft and IBM from advertising whatever they care to sell as "Java". From there it is a question of exactly how either Microsoft or IBM is going to get their new language and VM (whatever they decide to call it - maybe microsoft will call it C# and .NET; no, wait, they already did that) to be dominant, or at least bootstrap it into being a competing standard. Microsoft can do that, as you point out, by leveraging their monopoly. The thing is they've already done that: C# and .NET. They can do that quite successfully whether Sun opens sources Java or not. So for Microsoft the argument is rather moot. What about IBM? They don't have a monopoly to leverage so they'd have to resort to the nasty tactic of making a better language and VM with better libraries to manage to get it to take off. But wait, they can only do that if Sun drop the ball in exactly the manner I described and let Java stagnate and become unresponsive to change. So we're back where we started. Sun open sourcing Java really isn't going to make a lot of difference unless Sun drops the ball themselves - which is exactly what I originally said.

Jedidiah.

Re:Misleading Headline

[FatherOfONe]

If Sun can stop anyone from using the word "Java" then we agree, but if they allow forks then it appears that Microsoft could call it MsJava and change their vm to also accept Java compiled code.

I am not talking about a complete rewrite of a language like they did with .Net and C#. I am talking about them having control of a JVM. We have lived in that world and it sucked, I don't think anyone wants to go back to it again.

As far as IBM goes they still own a lions share of the server market and could easily fork J2EE. That would also suck.

Now I keep asking myself "what problem are we trying to solve?" People want the source to Java... No problem. They want to write their own JVM? No problem. They just need to pass the certification. Is that free? Nope. Do you have a passion for 3D game programming and want to help develop Java3D? No problem, get on the JCP and I am sure your help will be greatly appriciated. Want to help out with the core API's? No problem again, much like Linux though, it may not be accepted. So I ask again. What problem are we trying to solve?

How is this going to make my life as a Java developer any better?

How is this going to make the average computer users life better?

I am not trying to be a jerk here. I am just curious if I am missing something obvious.

Re:Misleading Headline

[Decaff]

OTOH you could view it like this:

Sun doesn't support Java on Linux. Open sourcers complain. Now, they do, thanks to open sourcers complaining.

Sun didn't support Java on Linux because of open source pressure. They supported it because Linux was very successful commercially and so needed an implementation of the primary commercial development language - Java.

Sun doesn't support Java on Linux as a tier-1 platform. Open sourcers complain. Now, they do, thanks to open sourcers complaining.

Which is complete nonsense. Sun have supported Java on Linux as a primary platform for a very long time.

Sun doesn't release source code for Java. Open sourcers complain. Now, they do, thanks to open sourcers copmlaining.

You need to have a far better understanding of Linux and Java history.

I really don't think you understand how little open source matters in this respect. Java is already the number one development language in almost all areas of development - open source, server side, commercial application development. Sun has open sourced more lines of code in the past year than any other organisation - the entire Solaris codebase, and now they are doing this for Java. However, unless they deliver the entire source code as GPL directly to Richard Stallman, along with a grovelling apology for ever having doubted the true open source faith, some people will never be satisfied!

Re:Misleading Headline

[dnoyeb]

Sun is worried about IBM forking there code. Which is predictable. Or what about Microsoft trying to take another jab at Java. its not Open Source developers they fear.

Re:Misleading Headline

[Decaff]

In the alternative universe that you live in that all might be true. The fact is that Microsoft's server software now outsells all of proprietary Unix combined and keeps on climbing in market share.

I suppose you do realise that one of the most important deployment platforms for J2EE is Windows Server? You are confusing 'server operating systems' with 'software deployed on those operating systems'.

And of course we don't need to discuss the desktop.

Where Swing has a bigger presence than Webforms.

Java was never even a blip on the desktop radar screen...even in the open source world.

Wrong. Java has substantial use for internal desktop development.

But it's not just .NET/Mono that is intruding on Java's server space. You've got LAMP and RoR. And those solutions are chipping away at Java on the low-end. By the time Java only has the very high-end server space left, it'll be all over.

What a set of delusions! Mono simply doesn't exist as a server solution, and RoR, for all its hype, is hardly used at all for serious commercial development.

You need to take your Microsoft blinkers of and take a look at the real world. Java use is still growing - check any technology analysis or job market survey.

Its Simple

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Use a spoon. Not only does it prevent you from forking, but its really hard to fragment anything with it.

Re:Its Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no spork.

Re:Its Simple

[LordOfTheNoobs]

#define spork(a) fork(a)

sweet...

Re:Its Simple

[Surt]

Unfortunately, there is no spoon.

You can't prevent it.

[mungtor]

That's why they have resisted it for so long. Now it will just be one more thing where there are sneaky, annoying inconsistencies between distributions. Nothing will be "broken", but things will end up being implemented slighly differenty and some portability will be lost.

I guess it doesn't *have* to happen, but there seem to be more than enough people that want to take Java away from Sun that it's inevitable.

C'mon Jeanie! *Please* get back in your bottle!

[pla]

Jonathan Schwartz at JavaOne this morning said that he will release the source code for Java. The company is asking developers to provide feedback on how to best get there and prevent forking and fragmentation.

Well, as a developer, I will tell you THE one and only way to prevent forking and fragmentation...

Don't release the source code.


Oops.

How to prevent forking and fragmentation

[gronofer]

The code isn't going to fork itself. If Sun is doing a reasonable job maintaining the source code, they don't have much to fear from a fork. If they are not doing a good job, a fork would hardly be a bad thing.

Re:How to prevent forking and fragmentation

[Yaztromo]

The code isn't going to fork itself. If Sun is doing a reasonable job maintaining the source code, they don't have much to fear from a fork.

That presumes that there isn't an 800lbs. gorilla sitting in the next room just plotting to catch you unaware and clobber you.

In the current OSS world, there is a sort of agreed upon level of friendliness between projects. Projects may compete, but they also cooperate, and everyone is more focussed on creating the best project they can, and not just trying to kill off the other guy.

Microsoft, however, is a business -- and their business has always been to kill off (or buy out) their competition. Playing fair doesn't figure into the equation. They control the platform that 90+% of users are running on their desks, and they control a LOT of developers, both inside and outside Microsoft (and we've all met the type -- the developer who is so sold on using all Microsoft technologies, they'll use a poor solution and write 200 lines of code to do what you could do in 6 lines of code in another, non-MS environment, just because their solution is based on Microsoft technologies).

So how is this for a scenario: Microsoft comes out with a new release of Visual J++.NET based on Open Source Java, but changes the bytecode generated subtly to make it incompatible with other JVMs (or, perhaps worse, decides to add a few of their own keywords to the language, and ties them directly into Windows-specific APIs). They don't call it Java -- they call it "Visual J++.NET", however the pro-Microsoft developer probably already associates "J++" with (what they think of as) "Java", and decides to use it for all of their Java development.

Suddenly the Java world is flooded with code that only works on MS VMs. Microsoft winds up controlling a huge percentage of the Java developers of the world, and can start dictating the Java APIs and features developers use (as they can just start sticking whatever they want into their implementation, and as they have a huge army of 3rd party developers who will start using these features, the rest of the Java world has a choice: either implement the new MS features into the VMs on other platforms, or try to maintain Java purity and lock themselves out of a lot of applications developed on Windows, and create confusion for end-users by requiring them to have two competing VMs installed on their systems).

MS could also start bundling their modified VM with each and every Windows machine. When a desktop user encounters a "pure" Java application that they can't run, they'll either demand from developers versions of these applications which are specifically designed for the MS VM, or simply won't use these applications. This will be especially bad for things like applets and Java WebStart.

I can see all sorts of ways this could be bad for Java (and Sun). Unfortunately, Sun can't maintain the status quo either: they're losing ground in the Windows world (and it could be argued they never had a lot to begin with: while I'm sure there are a lot of Java developers on Windows, outside of some server-side stuff there really isn't a lot to like about actually running Java applications on Windows), and need the Open Source Linux world no their side in a big way. Sun would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that there are so many developers out there sold so completely on the "One Microsoft Way" when it comes to development tools and environments -- Microsoft has a stranglehold on a lot of devs out there, and those devs don't care about MS's dirty tactics so long as they have a huge captive audience to sell solutions to.

Yaz.

Re:How to prevent forking and fragmentation

[gronofer]

I think this concern is outdated. Now that Microsoft have .NET they are hardly likely to put much effort into Java.

I think even at the time such problems could have been avoided by releasing Java with a GPL licence. Most likely Microsoft simply wouldn't have touched it on those terms. Any changes they made would have been available to anyone in any case. Even if the "market decided" to prefer Microsoft's version over Sun's, it's would hardly have been the end of Java.

Now with a dominant .NET on the other hand, what would be Sun's position in the desktop computing world? The supplier of a browser plugin for use by a few legacy web games.

Change the title

[clevelandguru]

The title should read "Sun to Open Source Java". The source code has been available for a long time.

Huh?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Java offers nothing useful or exciting compared to what's out there.

What else is *out there*? c,c++,C#, Visual Basic, Python? If your going to tell me its terrible, I certainly understand that point of view, please at least tell me what you cosider to be better and what applications you have in mind. Just telling me its bad and not good for much, doesn't help much.

Any suggustions to what is out ther that holds such great advantages to Java?

Trademark usage.

[Anonymous Coward]

What I don't get is why Sun have such a hissy fit over supposed Java incompatibilites introduced through forking of free licensed code. What's to stop them preventing people from calling derivitive versions 'Java'? Sun could implement strict compliance testing, a-la UNIX, to ensure that derivitives are compatible, and can license the 'Java' trademark for use by those compatible versions. Problem solved.

You want to prevent forking?

[Trigun]

Create a strong community with strong corporate involvement. If somebody does fork the code, the project will either die or be assimilated back into the main branch. Don't worry too much about others, just make sure that Sun will stand behind an official community. And standing behind them also means listening to them, even the ideas that you don't like.

Look at Perl. It's open source, and hasn't really forked. It has, however, evolved.

Re:You want to prevent forking?

[magicjava]

No offense to Perl fans out there, but Perl doesn't have a Microsoft and and IBM trying to purposely introduce incompatable forks.

Making Java open source, in the sense of a GPL or similar license, will kill Java.

Re:You want to prevent forking?

[blamanj]

Take a feature like generics. There were at least two implementations (Pizza, GJ) available a couple of years before JDK 1.5. That's a fork that could have happened easily.

There are also raging debates over how certain numerics extensions should be done. You could argue that a minor fork has already happened with logging. Some people have a strong preference for Log4j over the Java API.

You get three or four examples of good but different forks, and Java as a stable, uniform platform could be in trouble.

Re:You want to prevent forking?

[nuzak]

> Making Java open source, in the sense of a GPL or similar license, will kill Java.

Then it deserves to die. This is not Uncle Joe-Bob's job going south to NAFTA, so what on earth inspires such protectionist claptrap for Java's sake? This is code. Evolve or die.

Microsoft has .NET and doesn't give a fig about being kicked around by the Java crowd anymore. There's even IKVM for when you still want Java. As for IBM, what was their unpardonable crime? Writing a new toolkit? That they didn't gobble down the dog's breakfast that was Swing and demand seconds?

You can only use the term "Java" if you pass tests

[geoffrobinson]

Anyone can use the code. You can only call yourself "Java" if you hit certain specs and pass some tests. In other words, if you can prove that you meet the Java standards (with API support etc), you can call yourself Java and use the source code. If not, you aren't Java. Feel free to use the source code.

This may not be a GPL license, but that's alright.

Is there any reason why such an approach wouldn't work?

Criteria #1

[TopSpin]

Whatever 'how' you come up with must satisfy one simple criterion: make it possible for the major Linux distributions to include the Sun JVM, runtime (tailored to whatever degree necessary to work well,) and source, in their product.

Re:You can only use the term "Java" if you pass te

[magicjava]

Is there any reason why such an approach wouldn't work?

That approach works great. That's the license they already have.

Just don't break it, please

[mattypants]

Although the source for the reference platform has been available for some time, the fact that it may become 'free' means forks are inevitable, and that's the only thing that's missing from Java, namely the freedom to fork it. Mind you, if the C++ crowd get hold of it that's what it will be... completely forked.

Re:GPL'ing java would be bad...

[Maxmin]

every project that used it would also have to be GPL'd because at runtime everything links to its runtime environment.

Really? You're saying that for applications which link to the Java class libraries, they'll have to be GPL'd as well? I thought that the GPL had an exception for "links-to" versus "extends" or "based-upon."

Why is this a surprise?

[Were-Rabbit]

Whereas I'm not surprised that Slashdot is bringing out the normal anti-Sun's-attitude-towards-Java dogma, is this really a surprise? Jonathan Schwartz is closer to being a pro-Slashdot geek than Scott McNealy ever was. If anything, McNealy was just an arrogant ass who liked staying in his ivory tower with Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. Schwartz has always shown to be more of a geek than McNealy, and releasing the source code to Java has been a "cry of the geeks" for a long time.

(Note that I don't use "geek" derogatorily as I fondly consider myself to be one.)

Sun is giving us a ton of surprises in the past few years with Schwartz on board - from AMD processors to their first, AFFORDABLE powerhouse workstations (Ultra 20). I'm not surprised by this move at all, but I also don't blame them for wanting to be able to protect one of their revenue streams. At least Sun is trying. I guess the Slashdot "make it free or forget it" is still too strong, based on the responses I've seen so far in this thread. Looks like when it comes to Java, Sun is damned whether they do or don't. Pity.

Re:Why is this a surprise?

[BigCheese]

Aha! So Sun has figured out how to Use the Schwartz.

Sorry, that name just begs for a Spaceballs reference.

Re:GPL'ing java would be bad...

[AuMatar]

No, thats the LGPL. GPL is everything that extends it or links to it. LGPL is only for the code itself and not linking code. Thats why glibc is LGPL instead of GPL.

Re:Less talkin' more openin'

[BrainInAJar]

More likely, Sun will make the source CDDL like the rest of their free-software (and hardware :) ) offerings

"Look at Perl."

[Dystopian Rebel]

Just so I fully grasp your analogy, do you mean Perl < 6.0, which was damnably hard to read, or Perl >= 6.0, which will be impossible to understand?

Re:Not such big news after all...

[mypalmike]

Even in this here Slashdot page, I see the java tag used all over the source code for this page.

For the bazillionth time, Javascript is not Java. I can't believe there are people on /. who don't know this.

Re:The Media Is Retarded

[magicjava]

Well, if those products are already out there and already open source, how can the OSS flag-wavers claim that Java can't be open-sourced?

How quickly people forget what Microsoft tried to do to Java. The only thing that saved Java was it license agreement.

YES

[JavaLord]

I can't wait to make the Javalord JVM. Soon the internet will be overrun with craplets that only work on my JVM. MUHAHAHA

In other news..

[dmt99]

Duke Nuke'em forever will release their source code....

Re:You can only use the term "Java" if you pass te

[VGPowerlord]

They're afraid that someone will linux it.

That is, come up with a new implementation that will become more popular than the original.

Open Source? Nah...

[zyche]

I don't care one bit about Sun Java as open source. Sure, it could be nice, but do you really think that a great number of amazing programmers would eagerly step up and immediately start to maintain and improve Java? And in that doing a better job than Sun & JCP is doing right now? Don't think so...

However, there is one thing Sun could do... one very important thing: remove the stupid click-through license on downloading the Java source-code. That one thing would mean that the BSD portstree or Gentoo portage could build Java from source - unsupervised. Today it's a total pain to manually download a bunch of distfiles. Even the patches can't be distributed without a click-through license. That sucks.

But then ofcourse, legal redistribution of Java binaries wouldn't hurt either...

But Open Source Java? Nah... Not really needed.

Re:Open Source? Nah...

[neurojab]

Sure, it could be nice, but do you really think that a great number of amazing programmers would eagerly step up and immediately start to maintain and improve Java? And in that doing a better job than Sun & JCP is doing right now? Don't think so...

Absolutely. We're not just talking about volunteers here. There are a lot of companies out there with a lot invested in Java. I'm sure they would love to have the opportunity to improve the core platform. Sun would still be involved in the maintenance, no doubt, so you'd be giving the cream of the crop of software engineers the ability to improve the platform, instead of a select few.

My case in point; At last year's JavaOne, there was a speaker (can't remember his name) that went into an insane level of detail on problems with finalizers, and he didn't work for Sun. If you gave him a swat at fixing the problem, it would just be taken care of, instead of being something that programmers have to "watch out for".

But Open Source Java? Nah... Not really needed.
I disagree 100%. Not going open source means you lose the inherent benefits of that model. Sure, Java is already "good", but there are thousands of ways to improve it (it's still catching up to SmallTalk in many ways). Why not let the interested parties do so?

At this late date, who cares.

[jmorris42]

Seriously, at this late date in the game who cares anymore what Sun does? Those who care not for Freedom have already adopted Java and those who care are either using another language or are now firmly in the GCJ camp and, knowing Sun, won't leave for any bait & switch offer from Sun. I mean, raise your hand if you believe Sun's offer to "open source" Java will actually become a code dump under an OSI approved license. And the odds of it's license (and you can bet your last dollar it WILL be Yet Another License) being GPL compatible are null.

Even today's new initiative to loosen the binary license to permit distribution repackaging is being being greeted by a certain amount of scepticism just because it is Sun. Personally I'll believe it is for real (as opposed to a deal for certain select popular distros, much like the Firefox trademark bullcrap) if jpackage.org can finally ship a binary rpm.

Re:C'mon Jeanie! *Please* get back in your bottle!

[misleb]

Don't release the source code.

Or another option is to not piss off contributors by rejecting suggestions and otherwise being resistent to change. Nobody is going to bother forking if Sun remains responsive to the community.

-matthew

TeX

[Ambush Commander]

I think that the reason Java doesn't want forking is to make sure that a program one person writes will always work on all Java interpreters. Sounds familiar to Knuth's concepts about TeX. The way they achieved it was by prohibiting new derivatives from being released under the same name (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#License) and those using TeX in their name must pass a rigorous test suite. The license is not GPL compatible, but perhaps Java could adopt something similar?

Re:GPL'ing java would be bad...

[codemachine]

Actually, that could be a good enough reason for them to release it GPL, and have a dual license option for some other Sun licenses.

However, I think they are more worried about Eclipse than MS at this point, and I doubt Eclipse would shy away from forking a GPL Java. Sun doesn't want the source of forks to be available for them to use - they want no forks to begin with. They are control freaks when it comes to their projects.

Really it'll come down to IBM and Sun working out some arrangement where the code for Java is available under an OSI license, but where Sun still has some sort of the control it desires. Given that Java is developoment is partly a community process anyhow, you'd think there would be some way they could attain that.

Re:You can only use the term "Java" if you pass te

[bill_mcgonigle]

In other words, if you can prove that you meet the Java standards (with API support etc), you can call yourself Java and use the source code.

It's worked well enough for the C camp. Has Java been submitted as an EMCA or ANSI or ISO standard? Of course there are multiple competing compilers which I guess is what Sun wants to avoid.

This is good for the community; maybe not so much Sun. It will at least force Sun to stay on their toes; maybe by doing so they'll manage to invent a new business along they way (and disappoint Cringely).

Re:IBM? Microsoft?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Microsoft's probable response to OSS Java, would be to comb through the source code for bugs, and call a press conference to announce "one gadzillion bugs found in open source Java, more probably exist".

I think the last thing Microsoft wants to do right now is to put "lots of bugs == bad" into people's minds.

Why is Linux forking considered a bad thing?

[Richard Steiner]

The freedom to fork the Linux kernel has resulted in varieties of Linux running on all sorts of platforms, including many that that the mainstream kernel development team has absolutely no interest in.

That's the beauty of being able to fork the code -- people can use it as the basis for scratching their own itch.

The freedom to fork Linux distributions has resulted in something that most markets identify as "competition", something which the x86 desktop OS market hasn't seen in some time.

In spite of Sun's touching concerns, this can actually be a healthy situation, and usually is.

good move

[unk1911]

i think this is a great idea. one of my biggest annoyances with writing java apps has been that if i ever wanted to release my programs and didn't want to make any assumptions about my users (mainly that they had any version of java already installed on their system let a lone a level of java that matched my own level) i would have to deploy a very heavy 50MB JRE with my 100K app... i think with the opening of the java source, much like in the linux world, someone will repackage the JRE and just keep the very bare-bones essentials so that instead of deploying a 50MB+100K apps i can deploy a 5MB+100k app.

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

Re:Huh?

[AKAImBatman]

Well, for one thing, it is slower than native code.

Patently false. It has been false for years now. Ever since Chris Rijk published his earth shattering benchmarks. (More recent benchmarks here.)

It's now down to the skill of the programmer. A good programmer will write speedy code, and a bad programmer will write garbage. Who'da'thunk?

For another, its garbage collection has a tendency to result in really bad performance stalls

When was the last time you used Java? 1.1? The modern hotspot JVM uses a generational collector which should NEVER stall during runtime unless it begins running into memory pressure. Go try this game and tell us how many stalls you see. If you think that's too "simple", try this one.

For another, its portability has been hampered by not fully supporting interesting OS features, which means that there are all these OS-specific extensions to add things like audio support,

Is there something wrong with the javax.sound packages? I'm REALLY thinking that you haven't tried Java since 1.1.

They don't integrate well with other apps, don't do a good job of supporting OS services, etc.

Psst!

Finally, Java makes it hard to add debug functionality into your code without a performance hit.

That's just a weak argument. Debugging info can really screw up a codebase and should be removed after debugging. But if you're wedded to the idea, get one of the three billion preprocessors that are available.

The bottom line is that pretty much any compiled language has great advantages over Java.

The bottom line is that you haven't used Java since the days of 1.1, but you feel that you're fully qualified to make statements about a platform you know nothing about. Whether you intend to or not, you are trolling, sir. So I would ask you to stop spreading FUD by not commenting on Java until you are again familiar with the platform.

Re:Huh?

[jeks]

Finally, Java makes it hard to add debug functionality into your code without a performance hit.

That's just a weak argument. Debugging info can really screw up a codebase and should be removed after debugging. But if you're wedded to the idea, get one of the three billion preprocessors that are available.

Actually, you can use the assert facility (since Java 1.4, I believe) to achieve something similar as a pre-processor out of the box.

Specificly, about 60% down the document, the following can be read regarding removing any assertion code from the resulting class files:

Removing all Trace of Assertions from Class Files

Programmers developing applications for resource-constrained devices may wish to strip assertions out of class files entirely. While this makes it impossible to enable assertions in the field, it also reduces class file size, possibly leading to improved class loading performance. In the absence of a high quality JIT, it could lead to decreased footprint and improved runtime performance.

The assertion facility offers no direct support for stripping assertions out of class files. The assert statement may, however, be used in conjunction with the "conditional compilation" idiom described in JLS 14.20, enabling the compiler to eliminate all traces of these asserts from the class files that it generates:

static final boolean asserts = ... ; // false to eliminate asserts

if (asserts) assert <expr> ;

Re:Huh?

[owlstead]

"It is provably true. The proof is trivial, in fact. Java is non-native bytecode. Therefore, at some point in time, that bytecode must be translated. This takes time."

That may be, but if you acquire information while the code is running, then you may be able to speed things up a bit. Normally, natively compiled code does not do that. Besides that, this is all theoratically speaking. The same argument was used against C: anything you did should be slower than assembly, no? It turned out that compilers won from assembly most of the time: computers are much better in following guidelines and testing for optimum performance than users are.

Besides that, I would not mind spending a bit of time for added reliability and security on 90% of my applications.

"Since few OS services are bridged except those that are fully cross-platform, a Java app cannot fully take advantage of the latest technologies in any OS."

That depends. Some things are enabled automatically. But one of the main points is write-once, run-anywhere. Sure, you can get out of that using JNI, but you may have to rewrite certain bits. On the other hand, how do you know that an application that you write runs smoothly on another machine if you used C++? What if it is an older machine?

In my opinion, the main advantages of Java are the simplicity of the language, the well-documented and largely very understandable API, the availability of a very large repository of usefull components (check out Apache!), the inherent security architecture...the list goes on. Even if you were 100% right on the previous two points, there is enough merit in Java to take it seriously. And if you look at the penetration rate of Java, well, it's HUGE. Mobile phones, smart cards, TIVO's, blu-ray will use Java, embedded devices and of course many businesses that take security and reliability seriously.

Re:A Microsoft fork can eventually kill java

[AKAImBatman]

What stops them from adopting one of the existing open source VMs, "embracing and extending" it (still open source, of course), and doing that now?

You do know that Microsoft gave the Kaffe project money, right? The stipulation was that Kaffe had to add Microsoft extensions to its codebase. Turns out, Kaffe never managed to produce a competitive VM (though it's looking pretty good these days) and thus never had the impact that Microsoft had hoped for.

Re:Mea culpa.

[AKAImBatman]

Well, it's been available since 1999. Seeing as it has taken slashdot—oh about—7 years to figure it out, you can understand why I'm a little peeved over the number of responders who've claimed that the source isn't available.

If you have a problem with the SCSL license, fine. If you have a problem with the JRL license, fine. But to claim that Sun hasn't released the source code? That's just frustrating.