Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat Not Satisfied with Sun's New Java License
twofish writes "According to a Register article Sun Microsystems' new GNU/Linux-friendly Java license does not go far enough for Red Hat. Brian Stevens, Red Hat CTO, says Sun should have open-sourced Java instead. The new license does have the support of Canonical (main Ubuntu sponsor), Gentoo and Debian." From the article: "He says the failure to open-source Java means that it can't be used on millions of $100, Linux-powered PCs envisioned under Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project, to bring affordable computing to children in developing nations. Negroponte wants only open source software on the machines, according to Red Hat, which is a member of the project."
The /. post mentions "support" from Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo, but nothing more. A press release from Sun contains a quote from Anthony Towns:
"We are really pleased to see Sun's increasing involvement in the free software community, from the opening of the Solaris Operating System source and now the re-licensing of Java technology to be compatible with GNU/Linux distributions, and are looking forward to building stronger ties with the Sun community in the future", said Anthony Towns, Debian Project Leader.
Marketing speak from Debian? Anyhow, it does confirm that Debian is convinced this is open enough "to be compatible."
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Before that, the Debian Project leader said someone apparently read the license, but not only was it definitly not analysed in public, but also apparently he did not think it proper to explain anything.
Debian's non-free is not for copyright violation, but for Freedom violation.
Correct.
Uhh.. Redhat *does* work on a Free Java stack. Look at the commits to http://www.classpath.org/ and that almost all of the gcj work is done by RedHat folks.
I'm really tired of people railing on Sun for not open sourcing Java. Leave Sun and Java out of it. Its semi-open source and it works! No fragmentation. Works on multiple platforms. What else do you want? You want a fully open source language? Use Python. One of the things I absolutely love about Java is that there is One Java. One JVM (that anyone really needs). I don't have to deal with many different JVM's with different problems. Simply this, look at Linux, its good and all, but its 80% done and will never be done. I don't want that to happen to Java too. Simply, leave my Java alone.
Free speech is getting expensive...
Except for certain math co-processor functions used for 3-d graphics, Java is rarely less than 50% as fast as C and often significantly faster.
If that seems counter-intuitive, consider that java compiles into machine code (at run time) that is run time-optimized.
For instance, if it notices that it's frequently calling a series of functions with a certain set of values and those functions don't change state, it could calculate the return and skip calling the function altogether.
Although that may not be an exact representation of what's going on, some of the optimizations are much more tricky, and they are across the board. These are things that C and C++ (and even assembly) physically can't compete with.
Here's another trick, one C++ can't compete with. In an OO language, you often allocate thousands of objects a second--that's extremely typical. In C++, it is necessary to spend execution time to physically recover the space of each object that has been allocated. In Java, the management process has gotten to the point where all it does is reserve the few objects it wants to keep then wipe the rest of the objects at once (like returning from a call, you recover the entire stack at once but for permanent heap memory instead of stack memory)
Or are you talking about the physical size of the JRE? It's 13mb, I'm not sure how much it expands to but considering that it's mostly a jar (compressed already), it should be much more efficient that C/C++ libraries. On top of that, since none of it's statically linked, each nontrivial Java app placed on the laptop should be smaller than the equivalent C/C++ app (Especially since byte code was invented to reduce size first--it was used in Excel to reduce code size long before Java was invented)
So, umm, in what way won't it fit?
Oh, and on top of that, to say something like java will scare kids away reveals much more about what kind of a programmer you are than I'd personally be comfortable with myself.
Not from Debian, just from Anthony Towns. He was soundly thrashed for this on debian-legal and debian-devel -- he's pretty much the only person who seems to believe Sun's new license is any good.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
What next, are they going to refuse to include the linux *kernel* because it doesn't use the latest version of the GNU license? Why would they do that. The kernel is free software whereas Java never has been anything like free software.
Where do they get off demanding that sun or any company release its software under any particular license? They only control the nature of what they ship
Sun is *already* giving away their software for free. Only in the limited sense that Internet Explorer is "free". It comes with very limited freedom and lots of strings.
Red Hat and others should consider themselves lucky that it gets to sell software that it didn't even write in the first place. Luck had nothing to do with it. It is free by design, and were it not free, it would not have received the contributions.
The people that are acting to *prevent* anyone from getting access to java are the linux distro makers who refuse to put java in. It has been Sun's decisions to restrict its freedom from the outset, which is why many people who cared most about Java have abandoned it for better alternatives.
This is nothing but an inconvenience for users. Who seriously does not go ahead and install sun java anyway? There are any number of languages with a free or open source base whose users do not just go ahead and install Java, and their numbers will continue to swell as long as Java is proprietary.
Who is not inconvenienced by the fact that most distros refuse to integrate it into their package management scheme? Apparently Sun is not inconvenienced, and it is their call to make the license free or proprietary.
There's literally no reason that red hat, ubuntu and others couldn't package sun java. Only if you are someone who can't tell the difference between Free / Open Source and proprietary software.
They only do it out of a desire to strongarm sun into using a different license which will not provide any benefit to their user base. Their current user base or their potential user base? The Sun directions have greatly restricted the former. You may be right that those who care about programming and distribution freedom have already moved on which is why there is no one asking for it any more. I stopped asking quite a while ago and ported away from Java.
If I was a shareholder, I would punish them severely for this nonsense, as it doesn't serve any kind of business end that I can see, and is more reminiscent of the behavior of the FSF than a for profit company. Someone needs to remind them that they are obligated to pursue the ends of their users and their shareholders before anything else. Of course, and by the same logic, they really should be packaging Visual Basic, instead of Java in the first place.
This seems a pretty strong statement from Sun-- particularly compared to the waffling they've done in the past with respect to open source and Linux, yadda yadda. Given the conversations I had with various Sun-folk at the conference, it's pretty clear that there is a very strong pro-OSS camp within Sun, and we should be patient just a little bit longer.
And speaking of open source and Java, that was one of the big themes at JavaOne. Pretty much all the big name orgs here (Sun, Oracle, IBM, BEA, etc.) made a number of announcements about their open-source contributions. I know the debate on open source involves subtle and unresolved arguments, but apparently the powers-that-be at these corporations are convinced enough to buy in (quite literally, since they are ponying up serious money to fund the work). Of course, as profit-driven machines, they are doing it because of the anticipated return on such an investment, but that's still cool by me, since I love free speech/beer as much as any SlashDot AC, and will take any vindication of the same from just about anywhere I can get it....
There is no way you can call Eclipse Not Java just because it uses the available Java facilities to interface with the local OS. Eclipse runs in a sun JVM. Anything that is running in a sun JVM is definitely Java.
I agree that Sun is protecting their Java trademark. They have to after what MS pulled trying to kill off Java. I think they do go further than they really have to with it though.
So Eclipse the source code suddenly changes based on how it was compiled? Admitedly Sun designed all this talking at cross purposes into how they named a language a runtime and an ABI all the same thing.
Sure, when compiled into ELF binaries Eclipse (the binary) isn't in Java (binaries) anymore (duh!) ... but Eclipse (the source) is sure as hell is still written in Java (the language).
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
As far as I can tell, Debian doesn't have an official stance on the licensing yet, and debian-legal is quite unimpressed with it. The package was accepted into unstable/non-free prematurely, and has a good chance of being withdrawn soon. The article alleges support that really isn't there.
http://outcampaign.org/