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Simon Phipps on the Process of Opening Java

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sniff-the-air-from-the-vacuum-can dept.

twofish writes "Simon Phipps, the chief open-source officer at Sun Microsystems, has reaffirmed Sun's commitment to Open Source in an interview with computerworld. The focus of the interview is Simon's efforts to fully open source Java. He points out that many problems need to be resolved before Java can be open sourced — ownership, legal, access, encumbrances and relationships with Java licensees. It took Sun a full five years to solve these issues with Solaris. However Simon predicts that it won't take anything near this amount of time to complete the task with Java. Of course, one of the other concerns for OS Java is the resulting incompatible versions and breaking of the Java WORA model (Gosling himself has always been particularly concerned about incompatible forks resulting in the introduction of an open source version of Java) and this opens up additional problems for the open source Java model."

3 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. As a web app developer... by Kenja · · Score: 0, Troll

    I've reaffirmed my commitment to stop using JAVA when ever I can. Its just no longer worth the trouble it causes. Just about anything I want to do can be done via AJAX & DHTML.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  2. Re:Incompatible Java forks by ClosedSource · · Score: 1, Troll

    "MS forks and names its product 'J++'. They keep it just compatible enough that it segments the Java development community."

    J++ didn't segment the Java development community, if it had been allowed to continue it would have brought Windows developers in the Java world. Instead Sun sued MS and doomed Java to the minor leagues of desktop development.

  3. Understand the abuses by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 0, Troll

    The first step to stopping Microsoft's abuses is to understand the abuses. Microsoft has, for example, slowed the acceptance of Java.

    Slowing the acceptance of Java has, in my opinion, slowed the development of Java. Together those effects have caused a lot more than $1.8 billion of harm.

    Microsoft should not be able to make a profit on the harm it does. The company should be made to pay $1 for every $1 of harm.

    The world needs Java, and a more completely developed Java, in my opinion. Anything that slows that hurts even people who have never used a computer, because anything that slows the development of our infrastructure hurts everyone.