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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.
64bit Support? Well I guess that will be trivial when we can at least build from source. Then into packages and Repo's :D
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
Am I the only one who loves Coldfusion?
-Jim Bastard
Once the GPL version is out there it's out there, having a closed source licence version won't stop that.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Sun wants to retain the dual licensing model for now (see above) and thus they cannot just use GPL'd code just yet. On the bright side they can change the license now at wish and can make Java GPLv3 or BSD any time they want.
Exactly - as soon as Sun put code in to it (i.e. the start) they had rights on it in terms of having control over people re-licensing it. Now that it's GPLed then Sun can do whatever they want, but the GPL version is still out there and free for people to take and modify.
I think I'm with everyone here if I give Sun a big "Thank you!" for all their trouble and effort. Java would probably one of the biggest wins for the community and its release when it comes will be worth a celebration.
Dual licensing means that Sun still has special rights
If Sun has copyright, they have special rights regardless of how many licenses they release Java under.
Frankly, if Java's released under a free license, its irrelevant what other licenses you use with it.
(is perl less free because of dual licensing? KDE?)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
... people recognize the scale and generosity of what Sun have done in GPL'ing their crown jewel.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
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 *
Multiple, parallel versions splits development efforts. It also splits QA efforts, and makes support for both versions problematic. It's usually much safer to have a primary release and branches to test new features, rather than being forced to rewrite from scratch. I give good credit to Sun for doing this: it's one of the missing Java support components for the open source world, and should allow inclusion of actual Java in distributions such as Fedora and Mandriva, saving us serious pain maintaining multiple, slightly conflicting versions in different locations for different packages. And it should make OpenOffice installations much smaller and more efficient.
Yes , bad mouthing a company without knowing anything about it, that's the way we can get companies to be more OSS friendly. Way to go.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Yes of course Java will be declared obsolete this year. As one of the top most in demand tech skill on the planet all the usuers are furiously swapping to make sure they convert to product Y by the end of the year and abandon the last ten years of development. (try typing in the word Java to a job search engine, then type in your favorite skill de jour)
there are volunteers who have been working on this for some time here .0 is based on!
which is what JDK 7
null
Once again, I thank SUN for all efforts in this direction. My request to other OSS evangelists is to let existing Open source implementations of Java die so that efforts can be spent on this SUN implementation alone. The availability of multiple implementations of the same idea is not getting us very far so far. I hope we have learned from this.
Applets? Do you think that's what Java is used for these days? Have you been in hibernation, or serving time?
Your head a splode
May I suggest Myths and facts about 64-bit Linux for your reading pleasure ?
Yes but they let people have some say. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Community_Process If there was something that you wanted in Java you could make a Java Specification Request or JSR for it and hope it gets moved in. But we all want avoid bloat so this is a very slow heavy process. Take a look at this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_version_history and you can see that several JSRs have been moved in to Java it self. I could be wrong but it seems that for Java 6 the additions to Java have all been from JSRs so it looks like Sun intends to have all new improvements go though the JCP first.
Come to think of it this reminds me a lot of other open projects. The code is open and you can suggest something should be in it. However if they say no you are SOL. You will have to compile the project on your own and add in your changes. What would you want instead? Is the only problem you have that Sun has final say in the JCP?
You should seriously consider installing noscript into your browser. Set it to allow first party scripts and block 3rd party scripts. 99.44% of all ads are GONE, and browser performance will greatly enhanced.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
I Have enjoyed writing software in Mono for the past year or so and developing .Net applications at work a little longer.
But one thing bothers me - you know what I going to say next.... ..Patents! or MS derived technology.
Now, to be fair it seems pretty much most software is 'perceived' to violate a patent of some description today.
As I understand it the mono vm apparently is o.k. but some of the libraries(e.g. ADO, Windows.Forms, ASP and even c#) are suppossed to violate patents and this is unfortunate.
Some of the software I have written will have commercial applications and the *uncertainty* of the status of mono in general is in question. Even the MS 'agreements' signed by Novell purposely *exclude* mono in any protection.
Personally I prefer Mono(and some great apps are available-e.g. Banshee, MonoDevelop) compared to Java but because of the huge amount of work by Sun and the community to fully open-source Java I will switch to it immediately.
My reasons to switch are: .Net's direction from v2.00 to v3.5 is becoming more tied in to Windows. From v3.0(or v3.5?) Microsoft included Vista libraries are part of the default installation. It's the old MS Treadmill(tm) all over again.
1) Java is open-sourced and the actual company(Sun) that created it are fully involved and are a positive influence in the community.
2) Java is present in almost all modern mobile phones. There is great potential to leverage this and I'm sure there are many ways this can be used with the Desktop.
3) The development tools are free, full versions and are very powerful. Visual Studio Express is free but it has reduced functionality compared to the full version.
4) 'Peace of Mind'. I can develop my software without looking over my shoulder wondering 'will I get sued'!
5)
As far as I know both Java and Mono are very capable technologies. It is difficult to choose one on technical merit alone, it comes down to the licensing - Sun has fully committed to the community and Microsoft has been fairly under-handed.
If Mono is to survive and be taken seriously within the community it must take a completely different direction. Start developing open-source equivalents of the libraries (e.g. gtk# for gui controls).
Like I said before I prefer Mono to Java (concerning the gui Mono just 'feels' more responsive than Java).
What we should do as a community is to fully get behind Java and push its development and start using it on the desktop. We can create some great applications for it and keep open-source software 'untainted'.
Sun have made a great long-term decision by opening-up Java - it will be seen as a safe option and is available for many platforms. .Net's long-term future is in doubt because Microsoft will not open-source or allow competing versions to exist. Many forms of computers now exist today in mobile phones, pdas, laptops and many different types of CPUs. Java(in various forms) runs everywhere. By using Java as a common standard all these devices can communicate together and develop interesting uses.
Just the insane ramblings of a elderly programmer (I'm 38 you know!).
P.S. 'Get off my lawn!'
Do you guys and gals remember when Richard did a short stint in a video for Sun following the announcement that Sun had decided to GPL Java ?
I can only imagine how happy Richard was on that day. He had every reason to be so. Not simply because Sun had chosen to use his license for Java-but rather because of a little bit of historical trivia that most Free Software users are too young to remember.
Now surely you know the name James Gosling. He was the one who created Java. But did you know that there is a rather interesting relationship between him and Richard ?
One of the single biggest reasons that Richard wrote the GPL and created what we now know as Free Software has everything to do with James Gosling.
"In the early years (1984 to 1988), the GNU Project did not have a single license to cover all its software. What led Stallman to the creation of this copyleft license was his experience with James Gosling, creator of NeWs and the Java programming language, and UniPress, over Emacs. While Stallman created the first Emacs in 1975, Gosling wrote the first C-based Emacs (Gosling Emacs) running on Unix in 1982. Gosling initally allowed free distribution of the Gosling Emacs source code, which Stallman used in early 1985 in the first version (15.34) of GNU Emacs. Gosling later sold rights to Gosling Emacs to UniPress, and Gosling Emacs became UniPress Emacs. UniPress threatened Stallman to stop distributing the Gosling source code, and Stallman was forced to comply. He later replace these parts with his own code. (Emacs version 16.56). (See the Emacs Timeline) To prevent free code from being proprietarized in this manner in the future, Stallman invented the GPL."
http://www.free-soft.org/gpl_history/Many people who are ignorant of this history have always been affronted by Stallman's use of the phrase "Java Trap". But is it really any wonder that Richard chose to use that expression-given what personally had transpired between him and James Gosling.
Bill Joy was the cofounder of Sun Microsystems. He is also the guy who originally wrote Vi. Bill Joy was also friends with James Gosling- and made Gosling's baby practically synonymous with the name Sun.
This little bit of trivia adds a whole lot to all of the flamefests over the years about Emacs vs. Vi. SunOS, which we now know as OpenSolaris, was the first heavily commercialized version of what we now know as BSD. Bill Joy used the code written at Berkley to create the original SunOS.
That Java is now GPL is nothing less than Sun saying to Richard-"Richard, you were right". And if one day OpenSolaris embraces the GPL Richard's victory will be complete.
You may think this is nothing but propaganda-but I encourage you to actually *learn* about the history of these giants of the computer world.
Now that the OpenJDK is %100 Free, %100 GPL, Richard has received the kind of vindication that hardly *anyone* in life ever gets. Cheers to you Richard and Cheers to Sun for seeing the light.
If he was in hibernation then he would know it wasn't.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
The vast majority of Java coding is in Enterprise Middleware - e.g. trading systems, payment engines, SOA, eCommerce middleware, messaging buses, ERP, etc. typically run on JBoss, BEA WebLogic, IBM Websphere and Oracle OC4J. These are often part of larger SOA offerings such as: BEA Aqualogic, Oracle Fusion, JBoss/RedHat SOA platform - all are Java based.
The large finance orgs where I work have 100's, perhaps 1000's of java people for every C++ person.
You'd find that most designers/architects would not normally spec java as a front end technology and would *extremely rarely* spec C++ for middleware. For a time in the 90's, C++ middleware nearly took off using containers from folks like IONA - but I've not seen an enterprise middleware container for C++ for a while now thats anything like the spec of a J2EE container - with the exception of microsoft's .net framework that can use C# - which is probably more akin to java than C++.