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Java To Be Opened For Christmas?
MBCook writes "At the Oracle OpenWorld conference, Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced on Wednesday morning that Java would be opened within 30-60 days, which would would mean about Christmas Day at the latest. Sun first announced they would do this back in May at JavaOne but didn't give a date. We've seen rumblings before on this topic. Schwartz also commented on the companies Sun Fire servers, Sun's relationship with Oracle, and general trends."
Now maybe we can have a Java plug-in for 64-bit browsers.
Mmmm... Java with the lid off, so we can see the coffee inside...
Sorry, couldn't resist, must have had too much caffiene thismorning...
Under what license?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I'll believe it when it happens. My money is on them releasing under a horrid unfree license and calling it Open Source.
But at this point it really doesn't matter anymore. GCJ already builds many major Java based apps into either Java bytecode or native executables and has long since passed the point where development would be hindered by a Open Source/Free Software release of Sun's version.
GCJ is now bringing a lot more to the table than just cloning the Sun stuff. Sun would never do native executables because it doesn't fit into their 'vision.' The JVM and Write Once Debug Everywhere has no real place in the Free Software world. In the Free world portability comes from automake/autoconf and doesn't need to pay the emulation overhead of a virtual machine or any of the other problems. Problems like each major Java app tending to bring along an entire JVM and set of libraries to solve compatibility issues.
Something I have been wondering.... GCC now accepts Java source and emits either native binaries or Java bytecode. Can it take C/C++/etc and emit bytecode? If it is treating bytecode as just another target what if a C# frontend were written? Could gcc take C# on input and emit Java bytecode on the other end? And if a mono backend were added could it compile Java source to it? And if this all came to pass would it be a sure sign the end of times were at hand?
Democrat delenda est
Open source VMs already exist, what we need is for sun to open source the java libraries.
FTA it looks like it really is, finally about to be reality (:)), Java under an OSI approved license. Not only that but within 60 days and all because of pressure from the community - I wonder where else that might work (drivers? - nah need a bigger market share...).
It looks like Sun Microsystems are starting to see the benefits of Open Source technology, first Open Office (Under the GPL no less) then Solaris and now Java, - I can only hope it catches on throughout the industry.
Just a couple of points - I know that Java isn't being released under the GPL, and that there are still some interesting debates going on about the CCDL and interoperability with the GPL (I wont even pretend to know the precise issues), but it is definitely a good thing. Since Sun Microsystems is primarily seen as a hardware company, and presumably isn't too worried about the revenue's it is losing from the software sales it could have had (I know this doesn't apply to Java but it could have to Open Office and did to Solaris) it does mean that nothing that they are doing can be readily applied to a Software company. So anybody suggesting that Microsoft et al should start Open Sourcing their code because it works for Sun Microsystems is probably a little off the mark.
Well anyway - Be a good day when it *actually* happens and his is very good news. I wonder if I should look at using Java...
PS: By the way (and slightly random) my spell checker in OO.org attempts to correct CCDL as CUDDLY and GNU-GPL as SNUGGLE, how sweet.
The dichotomy that exists between Microsoft Java (which is pretty bad) and Sun Java is, if not jarring, quite irritating. Thankfully, Sun Java is the norm. But if Sun Java is released under the GPL, I expect to see several more versions of Java, most of them incompatible with each other, coming out soon. Iceweasel, anyone?
Blackdown provides a 64-bit plugin. It has even more stablity problems with almost no human noticable performance benefits. There are some advantages to using a 64-bit JRE such as SSL/TLS in Tomcat (and other servers side applications) but for 99% of client side webapps that just does not seem to be the case. Also, using a 64-bit browser also means no Adobe/Macromedia Flash Player plugin for you! I know some YouTube junkies that "need" Flash more than they need Java.
the terms of Suns open initiate are so strict that Im not really all that excited.. you see how great it was for openSolaris.. it was a touted as a Linux killer??? well , in short .. nothing is gong to change..
Still wondering if this means they'll be opening up specs on how the ARM Java acceleration works ... it would be nice to have some of those free JVMs able to use that to speed up their
bytecode interpretation.
For those of you who don't know about this, most modern ARM CPUs -- like the ARM-926ejs as found in the Nokia 770 and many cell phones -- include three processor modes: (1) pure 32bit ARM instructions, (2) a 16-bit compressed version of ARM instructions called "Thumb", widely used in microcontrollers, (3) an 8-bit Java bytecode interpreter. The first two have public documentation. But ARM won't give docs to the last out, because Sun won't let them do that; you need a separate licence from Sun to get those documents. So it's fully within Sun's power to open up some widely available Linux-savvy hardware to run Java a lot better ...
There's another CPU that's in the same kind of boat, the new AVR32 from Atmel. You may have noticed that Linux 2.6.19-rc includes initial support for that architecture. AVR32 CPUs have analogues of (1) and (3) above ... but again, Atmel won't give docs to
the Java acceleration out, because Sun won't let them do that.
(And for background info: yes AVR32 is very new, likely its audience today is almost
all developers, only one model of chip available so far.)
So how about it, Sun ... are you really going to open Java up??
We need slower slugs.
The time difference depends on whether or not the garbage collector runs during that time.
Badass Resumes
So in other words, they're not open sourcing Java.
You're so right! They never open sourced NFS. They never open sourced OpenOffice after buying it from Star Division. They certainly never opened any of Solaris or J2ME.
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Interesting. The Open Source Initiative disagree with you, and the Free Software Foundation describe it as a GPL-Incompatible, Free Software License. Sounds pretty open to me. Oh, and I actually have read the license; I suggest you do to.
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Fucking moron. Sun have OS'd more software than anyone else I can think of.
OpenOffice,
OpenSolaris,
NFS,
Netbeans,
GlassFish
etc etc
Sun also contributes to Gnome, X.org, PostGreSQL, Mozilla and many other projects.
Get a fucking clue and stop spreading the same old FUD.
A wise zen monk went into a fast-food joint and said "Make me one with everything."
An even wiser zen monk didn't go into a fast-food joint, and said
"Make me one OF everything."
One standard version of core Java things like the language definition, bytecode definition,
and the annointed standard libraries is absolutely ESSENTIAL to Java's continued success.
Because "one of everything" means that a java app and library code-sharing culture and a
shared and reusable expertise can flourish. Fragmentation of the core standards will lead
to disintegration of the core value proposition of Java.
I hope that this issue can be dealt with as Java is opened.
Perhaps by trademark protection means? Break (fork) the standard if you want, but if you do
you can't call it Java.
Or perhaps just by a consensus-agreed committee approval structure like the java community
process.
Can you imagine if everyone were free to fork the XML standard and still call it XML.
Sheer pointless chaos.
Java forked in its core standards and libraries is the same.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I can't believe how many IBM trolls are in this thread (and Slashdot as a whole) decrying Sun's lack of a track record in open sourcing their stuff.
Have they ever heard of NFS? OpenOffice? OpenSolaris?
Is there something wrong with the CDDL that's not wrong with the Mozilla license? From what I understand, the CDDL is similar to the Mozilla license but simpler. I invite every single one of those armchair critics to stop using Firefox if they're so adamant.
Unlike IBM (with the exception of Eclipse), Sun actually *open sources* stuff. I invite those IBM trolls to push their corporate master to open source WebSphere, DB2, Rational Rose, or Lotus Notes.
This space left intentionally blank.
Than an open jar of java beans.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night!
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
Only if you redfine 'leak' to be something other than data which is no longer reachable.
A precise collector will always correctly identify the liveness of data, because it knows what is a pointer into the GCed heap. (That is the definition of a precise collector).
A conservative collector is used when an object may or may not be a pointer into the GC heap (e.g., it may be a pointer into memory that is not to be managed by the collector, sometimes it may be another type of object entirely). Conservative collectors must err on the side of retaining possibly (but not provably) unreachable objects, and so can leak. However, for a number of years now, modern approaches such as barriers and generational scavenging asymptotically eliminate such retained dead objects from the managed heap, unless they are deliberately created. Such deliberation usually requires some effort, can be prevented by the compiler, is readily detected at runtime, and is easy to debug.
Bad programming practices can result in the growth of lots of live data. Typically this involves using global variables. Sometimes this is accidental, such as when the top-level retains a history of results returned to it for debugging purposes or other convenience. However, these are not leaks per se -- the data is live in that it is reachable. Making the data in question unreachable (reset the global variable or previous-results list) will allow either type of collector to reclaim the space.
In general it is much more common that memory is consumed by abandoned data that was created in heaps not managed by the collector, and these heaps are almost always used by code written in another non-GCed language. This includes the runtime, libraries, and foreign functions. Usually this is fixed via careful wrapping of the non-GC-language code with finalizers (exceptions, dynamic winding/unwinding, and other techniques), and in most GCed languages which expect to interact with things like the POSIX API this is usually done through libraries written in the GCed language.
Finally, some GC implementations, particularly conservative ones, are simply buggy or are not using modern techniques. In this case it's the implementation's collector leaking, not the language.
Oops, typo on my part. I just added the adjective and verb parts to it last night. Apparently a bit too late last night.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011