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The Curious Incident of Sun in the Night-Time
Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is carrying a story by Richard Stallman which blasts Sun's recent Java move, claiming it is deceptive and self-serving, makes Java neither free nor even open source, and leaves him wondering why it has attracted so much attention."
Before all the anti-RMS wingnuts come crawling out, RTFA - RMS isn't criticising Sun for not opening Java, he's criticising the community & the media for their confused reporting (or endorsement) of the story (see Open Source Java? for a typical example).
[mildly offtopic] - Does anyone know what the significance of the title stallaman chose? It's too close to the book to not be a reference, but I'm just not getting it...
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
He actually uses this quote in the essay.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Yes - we did the DLJ (see https://jdk-distros.dev.java.net/) not as a move to open source Java, but to make it more easily available. The DLJ's intent is clearly about easing redistribution by OS distributors. (BTW, I work in the jdk-distros team)
There's a couple things he missed in the article.
One is a nitpick. The way the DLJ goes, we require one person per organization to agree to the license. Not per user, per organization. In the debian bundles that's handled through a debconf key that remembers the license has been seen and agreed to. An administrator for an organization could distribute that debconf key and then silently install Java across their organization. At least that's what I've been told is possible.
The other thing he missed is the other announcement last Tuesday. The "it's not a matter of whether, but how" comment.
To quote; "If you look closely at Sun's announcement, you will see that it accurately represents these facts." If fact, RMS seems to be saying that Sun says what it is doing, but people didn't read the announcement. (That sounds like 98% on the /. community ;)
He actually uses this quote in the essay.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
I might be being trolled, but Stallman doesn't refer to free as in money. He means the freedom for the users to modify the program according to their needs. A free software developer is perfectly enabled to charge for his software. It's just that many decide not to.
So maybe you are the one coming off as ignorant. IMHO you should be quiet and stay out of discussions you know nothing about.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
Wrong. The current eBay implementation was designed to use Java, not haphazardly pulled into it. http://www.sun.com/service/about/success/ebay5.htm l
[RMS] was once supposedly a good engineer (emphasis mine)
Um, perhaps you're thinking of a different Stallman, but I was pretty sure that RMS's ability was pretty well established.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
It's a very dark ride.
But I've never heard of MS suing an open source project or programmer. All MS can really do is change their software so it no longer interops with OSS (which hardly "crushes" any OSS) or distribute GPL software without making the source available.
OSS hasn't posed a serious threat, yet. But if Mono does take off, Microsoft will be looking to crush it. Which means that they'll use any dirty trick they can think of, including patent warfare. While they're pretty new to patents these days, I have no doubt that they'll abuse them if they need to. Some examples of former history:
- Microsoft promised "royalties" to SpyGlass for each copy of IE sold. IE was released for free, thus Microsoft didn't have to pay.
- Microsoft refused to license Windows 95 to IBM in time for the launch if IBM didn't sever their relationship with Netscape.
- Microsoft "offered" to make Netscape a Windows-only product, and threatened to crush them if they didn't agree. (We know what happened there.)
- Microsoft annouced the non-existant Windows product when Visi-On became a threat to their DOS market.
- Microsoft refused to license NT 4.0 code to Citrix so that Citrix could update their NT 3.51 product. Instead, Citrix was "graciously" offered to give their technology to Microsoft in exchange for the ability to market their ICA protocol as an add-on to the Windows Terminal Services product created with Citrix's technology.
- Microsoft sics the BSA on companies who refused to upgrade to the latest version of Windows. (Because they must be pirating, you know.)
Those are just a few off the top of my head. There's a whole backlog of Microsoft's misdeeds that I could dig up. The scary part is that former Microsoft employees often admit to these misdeeds with pride! (see: Barbarians Lead by Bill Gates for an example.) Microsoft will do anything it takes to ensure dominance. They are not an entity you willingly trust if you can help it.
There are plenty of Java libraries that are not part of Sun's source, and whose specs are not even freely available.
Name one. I dare you. I'm willing to bet you'll find the specs right here.
Of course if you RTFA, you would know that this is what Stallman means when he refers to the "Java trap".
No, this is not what Stallman refers to. He believes that Java is a trap because the source code is not "free as in freedom", and that you'll be "trapped" by the convenience. He also complains that Sun doesn't allow him to call his software an implementation of a standard unless he's 100% compliant with the standard. (Duh.) God forbid that Sun require that implementations of a standard actually implement the standard.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Free Java was making its own inroads and there were several people working on various angles of it (Kaffe, the Transgaming company, Classpath, Japhar and much more). The fact that a full Java later struggled is a topic worth debating, and I have put some thoughts in a recent blog post here.
Now, that being said, I am amused by your suggestion that *I* have to work on the projects that *you* consider important.
If you consider free Java important enough, you should step up and make it happen (contribute code, time or money). Am surprised that I have to spell this out for you.
Miguel.
Just a few corrections.
.NET 2.0 we are working towards that goal, the core libraries are complete, System.XML is complete and ASP.NET and ADO.NET are halfway there. Today, pragmatically we tell people that if they depend on 2.0 we do not make any guarantees, but many projects have already moved to .NET 2.0, particularly those that build and test with Mono (as they know what is available and what is not right away).
Mono has an optimizing JIT compiler for a number of architectures (x86, x86-64, Itanium, SPARC, SPARCv9, S390 and S390x mainframes, PowerPC and StrongARM) and works on a variety of operating systems beyond Linux, MacOS and Windows (see our web site for details).
Regarding
These projects include Banshee and MonoDevelop, they are both using our C# 2.0 compiler with generics now (which we have had complete for a long time).
Now the open source ecosystem created on top of Java is just fantastic, it has created a lot of really innovative pieces. Apache in particular has become a highly efficient machine that pumps out useful code, most of it written in Java.
You could either accept that there will be diversity in the form of languages, runtimes, frameworks and libraries and live a happy life, or you can try to embark yourself on a crusade to evangelize the entire world to use your favorite technology and become a bitter old man (or a bitter teenager).
Peace and Love,
Miguel.