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Sun's Java Will Be Free This Year
Ian Whyde notes that Sun is finally coming to the end of its struggle to open up Java completely. Simon Phipps, the chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems, said: "There were a couple of holdouts there. One was the area to do with raster graphics and 2D graphics. That turned out to be owned by a company that didn't want us to release that code as open source. We negotiated with them and because they've said 'yes, you can open source the code'... The only element that's left now is actually a sound-related component within Java. We finally decided that the vendor that's involved there just isn't going to play ball and we're rewriting the code from scratch. That's going to be done within the next couple of months." In another sense the milestone of a free Java was reached this week when IcedTea passed the rigorous Java Test Compatibility Kit.
And then we can fork it and wreak havoc on MicroSoft's plans by calling it .Nut!
Oh yey.
Am I the only one who loves Coldfusion?
-Jim Bastard
This is also the year of Linux on desktop.
You're new to slashdot, then?
RMS has decried the GPL'ing of Java as being a major assault on free software advocacy.
"For years we have warned people to steer clear of writing free software in languages that require non-free VM's or other components to work by calling this the 'Java trap'. Using this well known example with a VM that is slow and bloated and used for software that doesn't fit into any OS anywhere and which nobody actually liked, quickly got the point made and we could then more easily make the point about things that some people actually enjoyed like educational games written in flash... now SUN has GPL'd Java they have made removed our greatest example of the evils of the erm flash trap ! This may still have been a win for free software if only anything usable had ever been written in Java - but seeing as nothing has, it was only ever good as an example. Universities used the language as an example of good object orientation, we used the license as an example of the s/java/flash/g trap" the FSF founder said in a press release.
Despite his hardcore geek nature the release will more likely be remembered for his attempts at a verbal sed script than for it's actual point.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
... people recognize the scale and generosity of what Sun have done in GPL'ing their crown jewel.
you mean zfs is going to be gpl'ed?If he was in hibernation then he would know it wasn't.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
The kind that kills bugs!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011