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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.
I think Stallman is missing that there are a lot of commercial interests in Java that are very happy about the ability to bundle Sun's virtual machine. In addition, Sun is now in talks with those same community leaders to see about relaxing the Java licensing further so that it can meet the OSI's requirements for Open Source. (Of course, the forking issue is going to be a major sticking point...)
That being said, his position is equally valid. From his perspective, he's only interested in Java being "free" as in shiny boots. My own frustration with Mr. Stallman, however, is that he doesn't really seem to work with companies like Sun to see if their interests and his own can coincide. So he spends his time on an attempt to replicate a complex system that he lacks the resources to properly follow. (Don't get me wrong, GCJ is nice, but I doubt it will ever "catch up".)
Even more frustrating is that many of the other OSS "leaders" (*cough*de Icaza*cough*) feel it necessary to start brand new projects out of a sense of NIH syndrome rather than help support the platforms that are actually needed by the industry. (i.e. Java) The result is that the OSS community has managed to fragment its efforts and has had a much harder time catching up than it should have.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Honestly, this story got so much hype because a) The Community is too dense to grasp that Java source code has been available for years, no matter how many times it's explained to them and b) Stallman's musing that "Perhaps because people do not read these announcements carefully." applies to, say, editors at various open-source news outlets at least as much as to "people" in general.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Java has an NDA you have to sign before seeing the source. Java allows Linux distributions to ship with pre-built binaries. So it's as open-source and free as...Nvidia and Microsoft? Maybe Stallman has a point.
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.
Just because it's not as good as it could possibly have been doesn't make Sun's actions bad. They could have started charging us for Java, but instead they made it a little more open. I think we should be applauding a step in the right direction in order to encourage them to make more, instead of givin them the impression that they are hated, because why would you do anything for a group that hates you?
Philosophy.
Maybe I'm confused but I thought 2 SEPARATE announcements were recently made by Sun.
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1 - It will now be easier to distribute Java with a Linux distro
(see http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/05/05/java_lin
2 - Sun is planning to open source Java but has not decided on all the details (I presume they're trying to pick the right OSI-approved license)
(see http://news.com.com/Sun+promises+to+open-source+J
Look at the dates in the articles. The "we will open source Java" announcement (#2) was made at JavaOne. The "we'll make it easier to distribute Java" (#1) was made before JavaOne AFAIK.
I suspect, ultimately, you look at RMS as a would-be leader, and you say "But I don't want him as my leader." And that's all well and good, but sometimes he has interesting things to say, and you read him, and you agree or disagree. And that's what makes him relevent.
I'd rather read the well-thought-out comments (whether I agree with them or not) about copyright and Freedom in software that RMS talks about than read another bogus prediction from Dvorak or Cringely.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
And that's exactly the problem. 20 minutes after Java goes "free", some idiot will start adding pointers to it. Sun's stewardship of the language is the only thing preventing this.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I'm pretty sure that Canute (from James Baldwin's "The Book of Virtues:" King Canute on the Seashore, among other places, I'm sure) was attempting to prove to his officers that the world didn't obey him, which isn't exactly the image you were trying to call up.
That said, the essay really had just one topic (reflected by the title): there's a mistaken identity problem with Sun's change in licensing. It's not "Free Software," nor even open source. Now, it doesn't seem like you disagree with his thesis, so what's the problem?
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
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 ;)
not if they wan't compatibility with existing jvms they won't.
If you can make a pointer system that gets past the bytecode verifier then there is nothing to stop you implementing it now. Free java compilers are not in short supply its the libs that are the issue.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Why didn't he say "ACD/The Curious Incident of Sun in the Night-Time"?
Doesn't he realize how much ACD contributed to his headline? Why doesn't he do the right thing and put ACD/ in front?
Ever since the term "open source" was coined, we have seen companies find ways to use it and their product name in the same sentence.
Whats funny is I don't understand the confusion here. Sun announced that Java has a new distribution license so Linux distros can have java in their non-free sections of their package management systems.
Sun also announced that they are looking in to releasing Java source under an osi approved license. They are two individual stories, and it has absolutely nothing to with the decade old free vs. open source software debate.
"It does not say that Sun's Java platform is free software, or even open source. Available, that is, as proprietary software, on terms that deny your freedom."
Sun owes me nothing; they paid the salaries of the people that developed and implemented Java. And Sun's current financial situation, in spite of the hugely popular language, is evidence that they aren't laughing all the way to the bank as a result of controlling Java.
So what freedom of mine is Sun denying? People and/or corporations who create intellectual property are under no obligation to give it away for free.
Go use C++, or PHP, or PERL, or Ruby if you can't abide by Sun's terms.
... the Free World mentality. It must be something like the grown men who devote their spare time to creating their own race car: it looks cool, they did it all by themselves, but it will never run on a track or even down the street, just sit there with its chrome ClassPath logo shining in the sun, watching the Toyotas speed by. These people would love to get all the hard won knowledge of the professional racing teams for free.
The biggest problem I have w/ RMS is loudly using words like "ethical" and assuming that everyone means the same thing by them as he does. It's a common failing in the modern world (listen to US political parties pretending to disagree with each other sometime), but it makes a guy who was once supposedly a good engineer sound like the guys who are _really_ trying to destroy the world, and not by selling closed source software either.
In the end, Sun has the right to use any license they want, and the ethical choice in a free society is to support that. Anyone is welcome to try to convince others to change the social contract, but the good guys shouldn't do it by demonizing Sun, etc, because they won't accept someone else's non-advantageous license terms for their own work.
Dear sirs:
It has come to my attention that you are doing a woefully inept job. Communication between editors is apparently non-existent, no attempt is made to drill down to original sources, misleading and incorrect article summaries are often posted, your copy editing is virtually non-existent and you frequently commit numerous other sins against journalism. *You should be ashamed* by your lack of professionalism. It casts a shadow on you, on Slashdot, and on the tech community. In fact, were you my employees, you would almost certainly be out of a job.
Please, please, please, stop screwing around and treat this like a fucking job. There are eight hours in a workday: use them for working and you might even gain the respect of the Slashdot community and that of other, professional journalists.
Thanks for your time,
Acy Stapp
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Yeah, that's why I never use Python, Ruby, Scheme, Lua, Perl, Sed, Awk, m4, sh, batch files, etc: Someone might add pointers to them one day, and if that happened, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to control myself, and then I might end up falling off the no-pointers wagon. I just can't accept that risk.
Sun may have a few good reasons not to fully liberate Java at the moment.
First, Sun is ripe to be aquired. With the CEO-for-life gone, a reasonable market-valuation, and a set of "crown jewels" (Solaris, Java, fantastic server design), it's just a matter of time before someone (Apple?) sees the match and ponies up. Given that very likely possibility, why would Sun weaken its short-term value proposition for a buyer by giving up a certain amount of control over Java. (Not to mention putting a lot of cutting-edge VM code out there for competitors to leverage.) Java is a crown-jewel for aquisition; why give that up?
Second, Java is doing quite well without being fully open source, thank you. Go do searches on the job market. Java is still the hot ticket. It is a skill in demand because it holds a commanding share of server-side development; past, present, and through intertia, future. For any sysadmin, downloading and installing a Java VM is child's play. It's also free-as-in-beer. Yes, that isn't the same thing as fully free, but it's good enough for Java to be successful.
Third, Java has succeeded, in large part, due to a reasonably open, albeit slow, process known as the JCP. There's a level of quality, consistency, and prudentness to Java which has made it successful. We can argue day and night whether all the open-source developer's in the world tweaking Java outside of Sun's stewardship would be more or less successful. What matters, for Sun, is that the current process is successful. Change from that course must be accomplished in steps to verify Sun isn't heading in the wrong direction, for its bottom line.
I should add that as a developer, I'd love to see Java be FOSS; GPLed or BSDed or whatever. Consider, for a moment, that Sun is a public company, and you'll see why Sun has done more to open-source their flagships than, say, Oracle or Microsoft. Or IBM for that matter (AIX, mainframe-OSes, DB2, Lotus apps, Websphere, Rational apps, MQ...)
Apologies in advance that the article is mainly about the media's misinterpretation of Sun's move, but in my opinion, Java licensed in a way that promotes its distribution as part of Linux flavors is still newsworthy, and Sun has taken yet another big step.
With Perl 6 coming out, we will be able to compile and execute bytecode with Parrot. I see the need for Java being opensourced coming to an end with the release of the next version of Perl.
Worse yet ... someone might add operator overloading! And you'll be able to concatenate strings with the addition operator! Anarchy!
Oh wait, they did that already? But isn't operator overloading evil?
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.