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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
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
No, that's just your average Slashdotter. When the last story was posted, I was shocked at the caliber of people who didn't know about Java's source code. The fact that the source has been available for about 7 years makes this incredibly frustrating.
Most of the OSS "leaders" are well aware of the SCSL and JRL. They don't like the SCSL because of fears of "contamination" by reading the source code. (Sun's lawyers are often terrible at writing licenses. They seem to add in every boiler-plate requirement in existence, even if it isn't the intent of Sun Microsystems Corp.) The JRL license fixed many of these problem with viewing the code, but it doesn't allow for the source to be forked or otherwise redistributed. There's also a lot of handwaving from OSS projects that the JRL might be dangerous even though they can't find anything wrong with it.
What they *do* have a valid complaint about is that Java isn't OSS as in the OSI definition. Which it's not intended to be. It's open source as in the source can be freely read and played with. It's also open as in it's fully standardized by the JSR Committee. Sun has been very reticent to actually "Open Source" (note the caps) Java because of the problems they had with Microsoft. Had Microsoft not abused their contract with Sun all those years ago, Sun might still be releasing only a reference implementation for others to build their own JVMs against.
Given that it was a reference implementation, it would have made sense to make it Open Source by now. Unfortunately, Microsoft did what they did and Sun is now the primary Java distributor rather than the merely the enforcer of the standards.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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
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?
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.