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More Open Source and Linux Support from IBM
Neville writes "IBM moved its developerworks out of beta and launched it with a new Open Source Zone. Current open source projects include jikes, a java compiler that works blazingly fast in Debian, BSD, and RH. Jikes is tres cool - as usual, IBM actually implements java better than Sun. Maybe this is what it takes to finally get java and linux to mesh, and maybe I can finally convert my last Solaris x86 box to linux. They also offer a Linux Zone with info on Python and GNOME. "
One of the things I like most about IBM's Open Source moves is the license.
This isn't a "It should be BSD/GPL/MPL" post. I'm not going to discuss which is "better" (ther is no answer). Instead, I think the the IBM license is almmost optimal for a commercial organization that wants to contribute to Open Source.
Why do I say this? Well, it not only is quite friendly to other licenses, it also adresses two critical issues for companies: Patent Licensing and assumed Liability. These are not really well defined in most of the other Open Source licenses. IBM did a good job with it.
I'd really like to see the Open Source community rally around 3 or 4 licenses. Rather than having the huge proliferation that we have now, I think it would be really beneficial to have a couple of licenses, each tailored to a specific group. That is, make a definative statement about the goals each of the 3-4 licenses, and really, really encourage (with a bat, if necessary (wink,wink)) companies to pick one of them, rather than make their own. I think the IBM license is good enough that it should be one of the 3-4 (I'll leave the other choices for you to war over...)
Now, I'd be really happy if IBM created a Open Source highly-tuned VM/java library set....
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
FWIW, I grabbed Jikes a little while ago as soon as I heard about it. If you don't know, Jikes is a Java bytecode compiler, not a virtual machine. It won't make Java run faster on your Linux box (the alphaworks JIT JVM 1.1.8 is what you want for speed, but it's not open-source).
Jikes stresses compliance to Sun's published standards. It was kind of interesting to read through the source and find comments where they had run into contradictions in the standard. Beyond that, Jikes also reportedly compiles Java really quickly.
I built Jikes from source on a SuSE 6.0 install with a 2.2.9 kernel. I was pretty impressed with how well they set up the make -- it detected compiler options and built with no problems. Word of warning, though, it took several minutes on my P166 with 64 meg.
All I can say is that IBM is impressing the heck out of me these days. My sincere thanks for releasing such a strong compiler under an open license.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I learned about jikes a few months ago at my (NT-based) employer and was pleased to discover that it also ran on my RedHat Linux box at home, and yes, it IS fast. So fast I had to check to make sure that it actually compiled the files. The difference is that sun's javac is implemented mostly in java itself, while jikes is C++ (owch)
At the same time I discovered IBM's JDK for Linux , and I prefer it over Blackdown. The IBM jdk requires native threads, so if that's an issue get the Blackdown green threads jdk. (It's at 1.1.8, I hope their 1.2 shows up soon).
For you Visual Age fans, IBM has a Linux version available for preview now also.
IBM may be be the best Java tools company out there.
IBM has done a lot of good stuff since getting knocked off of their pedestal back in the day. (Well, except that they didn't marker OS/2 very well). I often wonder if even (gasp) Microsoft could be "good" if they ever realized that they aren't the only option in the computing world.
As the Debian maintainer for Jikes, I have been incredibly impressed with IBM's serious adoption of Open Source. With the original Jikes release, there were problems with the license which prevented it from being included in Debian's main distribution. When these problems were brought to IBM's attention, they immediately agreed to get their lawyers to work on a revision. The end result is that Debian now has a completely free Java implementation available for those who can accept the limitations of Kaffe's runtime library, and a truly fast and robust alternative to Sun's javac even for those who use the JDK runtime.
Peace and love, y'all
GCC 2.95 (with libgcj) now has support for compiling (non-graphical) Java code to native binaries. If you had hoped Jikes would do this, well, look into GCJ at
Cygnus
and try using it. The binaries are indeed much faster than loading up a JVM, parsing bytecode, running it...
Jikes, on the other hand, compiles Java to bytecode much faster than javac. On the order of 10 to 100 *TIMES* faster. Use it instead of javac.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
Hi, I'm in Austin, TX. Today was the end of IBM's first "Linux Summit". There will be more... If you have a problem with Jikes, visit us at http://ibm.com/developerworks/opensource and use the Jitterbug system to report it. We'll try to fix it ASAP. By the way, the machine that serves up the Jikes Project Pages from dW is running RH Linux 6.0, from outside the IBM firewall. We plan to open up the CVS tree for write-access from outside IBM soon. We want to wait until we get v1.07 out, as Philippe is currently making (lots of) changes needed to get the LocalVariableTable right, which will fix a known problem with debug support. Note that Jikes is now in the "free" part of Debian, is included in Red Hat's main distribution, and the license has been approved by OSI. The mail lists should be up soon. We are waiting for Ken Coar (IBM, Apache) to check out the Majordomo setup. By the way, I'm leaving soon to have dinner with the chap who manages the developerworks/opensource site. Exciting times indeed, and who would have thunk it...from IBM. I know I wouldn't -- a year ago. Now -- I LOVE IT! Dave Shields shields@watson.ibm.com Jikes Project Core Team Member
Excuse me?
I'm interested in hearing your example of an innovative company.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
15 years ago IBM had a monopoly.
cheaper and better options to IBM machines came along.
IBM watched its monopoly crumble.
IBM used its vast resources to become a competitive company in spite of losing their monopolistic advantage and today, they do a lot of Cool Stuff.
is linux a better option to MicroSoft's products? you bet. is MicroSoft resourceful enough to survive losing monopolistic status, were that to occur, and produce Cool Things? I honestly hope so. I'd certainly like to see a world where a company full of money and talent contributed as much as possible. I'd much rather force MicroSoft to use their resources for the common good of the industry than see them go out of business.
Personally, I'm waiting for jinkies -- the Java debugger that discovers what's behind run-time errors (and what would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those pesky kids).
- Seth Finkelstein
Wait a minute, I've developed a *lot* of Java code, and in every case I've compared jikes produces smaller class files that run faster than the same java files compiled with javac. In some cases, the speedups were incredible. And given the compile speed of jikes, and the fact that it gives *much* better diagnostics, and it implements the language spec better than javac, the extra speed at runtime is just gravy.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!