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Sun Apologizes To Blackdown Team
LinuxGrrl write to us with a ComputerWorld.Com story regarding the recent hoopla of the Sun/Inprise JDK. Sun has apologized to the Blackdown team.
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When way the last time you heard of a major corporation apologizing publicly to a group of individuals for having bahaved in an entirely legal manner and without any threat of legal action?
Um, how about last time a company did something that pissed off a group of customers and feared bad PR. Companies apologize left and right as soon as they have stepped on people and it gets out in the press. Apologies are cheap, especially when you are an organizationd devoid of dignity (like these companies are).
Nothing interesting has happened here until we see evidence that Sun have changed their attitude.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
- Fetch the IBM unsupported ADSM client
- Uncompress and untar the package
- Then run: strings dsmc | grep "C lib"
- You should get some like follows:
- Download the source code to the Linux C library and take note on how much of the code is covered by LGPL
- Read the requirements for statically linking with LGPL material in the LGPL section 6
- Notice that, unlike the SCSL which does not require any acknowledgement of Blackdown's work, that the LGPL requires "prominent notice" of the use of the library
- Also, notice that by statically linking with the LGPL the distributor is required to provide a method in which the LGPL material can remain modifiable (an object files for relinking should be made available
- Try locating any prominent notice of the use of the Linux C Library in the ADSM README file - not there?
- Try locating any prominent notice of the use of the Linux C Library in the ADSM INSTALL file - nada?
- Try locating any prominent notice in the ADSM start-up banner and you get:
- Note that not only do they fail to acknowledge use of the Linux C library, they claim copyright on the material they aren't legally entitled to claim copyright on!
- Try Contacting IBM/Tivoli about the availablity of the object files for relinking as required for statically linking with LGPL
- Do they even acknowledge use of the Linux C library or do they just explain that no modifications to how they distribute can be made since the Linux client is not supported?
- Do they acknowledge that lack of support is not a valid excuse to violate licensing/copyright of material?
I personally am surprised at the turn-around time since the time that Sun was contacted that they decided (without any requirement from the license that they do so) acknowledged the work of Blackdown. IBM/Tivoli is REQUIRED by license to provide prominent notice and refuses to do so. While IBM has choosen to be kind on occation to the open source community with such works as Jikes, it is only because they choose to support such kindness. If IBM decides that they don't want to provide support in other areas of open source then they are prepaired to violate licensing conditions, violate copyright for redistibuting of material they don't have license to redistribute, declairing copyright on material they don't own and then demanding their actions are valid due to lack of support. IBM's "support" of open source has been like someone volinteering to teach an entire 3rd grade classroom and then when the school administration isn't looking forcing a third of the class to sit in the corner while insisting that the parents of the other two thirds talk about how great they are for volinteering to teach the class. Supporting open source shouldn't be a pick-and-choose game where you decide to unsupport following licensing conditions here but flex your PR for support over there. In my mind, IBM is far far worse than Sun has ever been. Jikes is just a cover-up for lack of supporting (or even acknowledging) open source. If IBM can justify violating LGPL while requiring we honor copyright/licening on their own products then they clearly don't take open source seriously. They understand that just because I don't support Lotus Notes doesn't give me right to redistribute the Lotus Notes server software and declair copyright on it. But they refuse to even acknowledge that copyright should work in favor of open source as well.By the way, IBM/Tivoli has been informed of the LGPL violation by both email and phone. They have not given any indication they plan to correct their actions.
Sun might apologize, but Blackdown or any other developers outside sun that might have contributed. are still not mentioned anywhere on their site (Early access site requires registration woth Java Developer Connection).
Understanding is a three-edged sword. --Kosh
This is nothing new, and the reason that my companies (as in the companies I run) dropped Java a few months ago. Sun doesn't want a viable leading edge Linux platform. Linux Java (if Sun has its way) will always trail the Solaris/Win32 versions by at least a minor release.
The wild card is the recent emergence of viable IBM JDK products. You will see Sun fight this on a legal and PR level and they will begin to change Java (a la Microsoft tactics) to keep IBM and others from using a standard Java unowned by Sun. This is also the reason why the ECMA standards submission was retracted.
I hope those of you still counting on Sun for a good portable Java implementation enjoy yourselves.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
The change happened a long time ago (when was the RS6000 introduced?). I will never forget going to a computer show and seeing the IBM folks in jeans and sneakers and all the Apple people in suits. I wondered what universe I'd woken up in that day.
THINK! apparently is becoming fashionable at IBM again.
I like what IBM is doing; they seem to be making the fewest mistakes of all the people jumping on the bandwagon, and sadly I think they are going somewhat unnoticed for it.
In the end, though, I think IBM sees Linux and Open Source as a way to win against Microsoft. They lost in the OS/2 battle, when they played by Microsoft's rules. Now they get a chance to turn the tables, change the rules, and score big. They follow the "widget frosting" model of open-source: they make Big Iron, and as long as they have a full-featured OS, they sell boxes. By unifying their offerings from desktop, to small server, to big iron, they present a unified front, something MS and their 42 software offerings can't match. They develop loyalty in the community, so people start using their development tools, buying their hardware, and killing MS market share. They get tons of free advertising from Linux partisans, so their sales force can be more effectively utilized. Its a win on all fronts. All they have to do in return (to keep this win-win situation going) is behave. Open the tools, don't piss people off, and don't hoard.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Wowsers! I didn't know I was part of a "cover-up" -- I thought I was just an overworked programmer paid by IBM to work full-time on open-source!
In any event, grep does produce the output you report. I will send a letter about this to management.
By the way, I suspect the person who put this file together didn't appreciate the distinction between static and dynamic linking. We first got requests for Jikes for Linux in April '97, and I didn't fully appreciate the distinction then even after exchanging several e-mails with rms himself. I didn't reconsider this again until June '98 (after getting yet more requests, and some help from Nelson Minar at MIT). I spent a couple of weeks going over the GPL and exchanging (lots of) e-mail with one of our attorneys before obtaining permission to release Jikes in binary form for Linux (Jikes was the first binary for Linux released from Research, as it was later the first open-source program from Research).
dave
PS: (Shameless plug). I'll be speaking on Jikes at the Bazaar next week, and also at the NYLUG meeting (in the IBM bldg. at 57th and Madison) Wednesday night. IBM is also sponsoring a reception at FAO Schwartz from 9-11PM Wed. night for Bazaar attendees.
In the end, though, I think IBM sees Linux and Open Source as a way to win against Microsoft. They lost in the OS/2 battle, when they played by Microsoft's rules.
I think the thing you miss is that IBM plays by a different set of rules all together. They lost the OS/2 battle because they saw it as a low-end threat to their high end profit centers. Time and a consulting business has proved to them that there is money to be made on the low end.
Still, if you were to call IBM and ask for a 'ebusiness' solution, Linux wouldn't bubble up to the top of their list. They'd be more likely to do the following:
1) Do you need (can you afford) a Mainframe?
2) No? Do you need (can you afford) a high-end RS/6000?
3) No? Do you need (can you afford) an AS/400?
4) No? Do you need (can you afford) a low-end RS/6000?
5) OK. So you want Windows NT consulting services and hardware?
6) No? How about Linux consulting services and hardware?
7) Oh, you want OS/2? Let me transfer you.
The good news is that Linux is on the list, which means lots of support and ported products. (It also lets IBM drop it's less profitable low-end RS/6000 line. Linux is also good for 'services' like DNS and mail gateways to the big iron.)
The bad news, with a big high-end company like IBM, Linux is never going to be seen as a 'strategic' platform like AS/400 is. If you want a hardware vendor that's 100% behind Linux, buy VA, not IBM.
(AS/400, btw, has been growing far faster than Windows NT in recent years, and by IBM's account is more profitable than all of Sun Microsystems. They're not going to undercut that by pushing something like DB2 on Linux. They're not stupid.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The limit of accidental action from a corporation is shipping a PC with the wrong amount of RAM. Anything this major is deliberate and premeditated.
Sun Wrote the SCSL. The license specifically allows them to do this. Why? Because at the time they created it they had this sort of thing in mind.
Any apology will therefore be insincere. Any attempt to pacify the Blackdown crew is just that. I don't trust any publickly traded corporation. Simply because the only thing keeping them out of the slave trade are a few old laws.
Trust licenses that protect your interests. Nothing more or less matters. Verbal communication doesn't matter. Promises just stink.
If Sun was sorry it would release the software under a free license and allow developers to own the work they do on it. Since they are not even considering that, we can assume they simply want to save face.
Big deal.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
.....how in the old days, "Big Blue" were the bad, proprietary and closed ones while Sun was the "good" alternative (someone around here has a clever signature saying something like "I remember when Sun really was about open computing").
Now, everybody is cheering at Big Blue and ranting over Sun being proprietary and closed....
One has to wonder...when will the things change again, and we will find ourselves cheering at Microsoft...? (It could happen, you know....)
-- "Life is a bitch - and she hates me..."
It's interesting that there have been several mentions lately of IBM's support for Java on Linux. (and Linux in general...)
It seems that while Sun makes a big noise about Linux and then catches flak for the SCSL, IBM quietly carries on supporting Linux and Java.
However, my knowledge of IBM's real policies towards Linux are sketchy at best... Anyone care to tell us what licenses IBM are using? Has anyone had any good/bad experience with IBM and Linux?
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
While SUN is making those uncredible mistakes (withdrawal from standards process, theft of Blackdown's effort while denying credit), it seems odd to see that its stock is climbing without rest (today by 9%), and has done so for many months. Apparently stock market investors don't seem to be like us. My own reaction (if I had money to put in that sort of game) would have been to retaliately sell my SUN stocks.
why a company like Sun (which after all employs some pretty smart people coming from the free software (BSD) camp) makes such mistakes. Surely they have some people who understand the open source (GNU) mindset. So what do they do? They simply take someone elses work (Blackdown) and distribute it as theirs. While a legal move, this is something that anybody with half a brain could have predicted that it would cause some anger.
... interestingly enough, IBM (with it's monopolistic past) seems to get/accept the OSS mindset with a surprising agility. So it can be done. So why doesn't Sun get it? Maybe the real reason is that they're scared of Linux. Linux is improving at an incredible rate and already offers some benefits that Sun can't match (better user interface, nicer desktop, etc). How long until Linux is scalable enough that it starts invading Sun's territory of high-end servers? This probably is Sun's ultimate fear: they lost the desktop to Windows, they're under attack in the mid-tier (from Linux and NT) and Linux scalability seems to be improving rather fast. Despite all their claims, Linux (for them) is an enemy that threatens them (and radically devalues much of their software offering).
While Sun might make good hardware and have a decent OS, their attitude/actions speak louder than words: they want to side with the OSS community but not pay the price. They want ultimate control of their technology. This of course is their right but they should not be surprised if the OSS community doesn't follow/believe them anymore. They've disappointed too many people too often
It's kinda weak, but you can find it here.
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
this looks ugly. according to the article it almost seems as if the blackdown team is all but disbanded. i never really stopped to think about it, but it must have been tough for the blackdown team to have to deal with sun's ways for so long, just to make the product available to us. i guess i just want to say THANK YOU BLACKDOWN for all the hard work you guys have put in over the years. perhaps sun will see the reaction in the linux community and get their act together -- or does it take a DOJ investigation to make big business see the light?
The really interesting issue here is the way the free software community has impacted business model.
When way the last time you heard of a major corporation apologizing publicly to a group of individuals for having bahaved in an entirely legal manner and without any threat of legal action?
Sun may be wholly behind the ideals of free software, but they certainly seem to be aware that they are part of a community and have certain responsibilities as a result.
It also says something about the power of public opinion on the internet.
In my opinion, the real problem is that we will soon grow tired of hearing this kind of stories and stop reacting. This is exactly the reasons why Corel and Sun are doing this:
"Let us see if anyone is watching us - if we get caught, we apologise, else we win. Sooner or later they will get tired of watching."
Imagine what will happen, when in 2 years Corel puts yet another stupid licence somewhere in their distribution? That's it: NOTHING, because we will all be so pissed off by corel that noone will even bother reacting anymore. What we need is a central linux (or more general "Free software") legal departement to fight them in the long term...
Sun seem to have a very tight deal with Inprise - Noticed that JBuilder Enterprise is only available for Solaris? Yet it is 100% Java, so to get it working on Windows all you have to do is follow the /bin/sh install script mentally on your Win box. I know, I've done it. Yet Inprise are prepared to loose all the Windows JBuilder Enterprise customers for a few months by telling people that it is Solaris only. That means Sun and Inprise are deeply in bed.
I wonder if deals like this will feature in a future DoJ vs Sun monopoly case? Granted Sun are not currently as badly behaved as MS, but that is only because they don't have the opportunity.
I seem to recall McNally saying a few years ago something along the lines that he approved of Gates' business methods - he'd do the same thing given the option. Maybe I remember it wrong though.
The bit that I don't understand is that Inprise are partly owned by Microsoft (IIRC). So how does that work?
DWR is Ajax for Java
I think that nit-picking any trivial (mis)use of free software encourages the fear and uncertainty that some PHB's still have toward using anything they don't pay $$$$ for. It would be better to save the legal analyses for cases which are truly meaningful.
I very much hope the Blackdown team will keep developing. Remember that we won't see anything but Linux x86 from Sun for the free OS's... The request for enhancements at java.sun.com that asks for FreeBSD should now be the top request (#1 was a Linux JDK), but I very much doubt it will be implemented. The Sun guys probably know that the OSS community is able to make a lot of noise and make lots of people create a JDC login and vote for that RFE, and they may have seen the Slashdot call to do exactly this some time ago (November?).
Does anyone know how much effort it takes to port the JDK 2 to yet another free Unix flavor on yet another system?
Here is an email from Kevin telling how the Sun applogy wasn't enough. Its a real shame.
Can I Play With Madness?
To me, it seems that a certain section of the Linux community has been far too hasty in condemning Sun for what is really a PR glitch. This is the history of Java on Linux: earlier this year (or late 98?), Sun license the Java 2 sources to the Blackdown team (with some fanfare). A few months later and it the Blackdown port is not going so well - whether this is the result of insufficient info from Sun, who knows? Inprise want to port JBuilder to Linux, but can't do it without a decent JVM, so they approach Sun and decide to do their own port.
Months later and no sign of a release from Blackdown. Sun and Inprise decide to make the Inprise JDK 'official'. Just as they are about to release, Blackdown come out with their own release candidates. This is not some big conspiracy, just appalling communcation problems between Blackdown and Sun.
There still seem to be many people under the impression that Sun have simply repackaged the Blackdown port; this is *not* the case, as anyone who has actually *tried* either port will find out. A guy from the Inprise team has been very active on the Java Linux mailing list trying to point out that they (quite legally) used a few Blackdown diffs, but apart from that it is an independent effort.
Maybe it was a bit lame of Sun not to acknowledge Blackdown in their press releases, but do they really want to be associated with things like Blackdown's v1.2 prereleases? I'm not sledging Blackdown's work (in fact their 1.2.2 port is superior to Sun's), but they have managed to give Java on Linux a bad reputation in the past.
We have to come to terms with the fact that Linux cannot survive as an enterprise platform without a decent JDK. Java is more than buggy Netscape applets and a slow JVM; when it's implemented well, it's a great solution for both server-side and client-side applications. Both the new Sun and Blackdown releases go a long way to fulfilling that gap; and isn't it better to have a choice as well?
briggers
-- briggers Remove blinkers to email me.
Thanks for all the hard work you've put into making Linux a viable Java platform. You've made a real difference.
I realize that, as individuals and as a group, you may no longer want to work with Sun. But i do hope that as a group, you will hang together, and find some other way to focus your considerable talents and energies on Linux/Java. Perhaps working with IBM (under better license terms this time)? Or the Kaffe project?
I won't be terribly upset if Sun's betrayal (despite their apology) means the end of Blackdown's relationship with Sun. I will be a lot more upset if it means the death of Blackdown.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Funny one that. Way back in 1989 or 1990, I was a student. I saw people in the Computer Science department wearing badges showing the Apple logo surrounded by the words "Keep your lawyers away from my computers". The big corporation everyone treated as the obviously incorrigably evil bastards was IBM. We also knew DOS was a steaming pile, but didn't care. We had UNIX, the way and the truth, with Sequent and Sun boxes falling out of our ears. This was at Edinburgh, Scotland. There was no Internet, only JANET, except for the gateway down at Imperial College in London, England. Wanted to talk to a computer? You needed to 14 digit number and type it into a PAD. Cue Yorkshireman sketch, "You were lucky! We... Kids today don'y know they're born". But I digress...
The point is, we failed to realise what Microsoft would grow into. Sun has grasped a significant amount of the new generation of students with Java, since its a nice and simple enough language for people to be taught how to program. I now make my living writing in Java, its nice and scales well enough for real world programs. I'd read the beta specification, the one with the bugs, in October 1993, just as I was passing from University into wage slavery. Having gained this, Sun has the potential to turn into an organisation as obviously incorrigbly evil as IBM was, and Miciosoft is now.
I appreciate the work of the Blackdown team, since I use Debian GNU/Linux at work, and would probably have to suffer Windows hell to carry on writing code in a language I mostly enjoy. As has been noted on Slashdot in the recent few days, its has its drawbacks. Stupid primitive types instead of programmer defined value types, and lacking parametric polymorphism being a couple of them. I'm less fussed about multiple inheritance, and think that the interface mechanism is a good alternative. It would be an even better alternative if not all of the methods had to be abstract. Of course, such non-abstract methods would only get to use other methods, including the ones left abstract, in the interfaces they extend.
I'm also totally into Free Software, not Open Source, standing up there with RMS on ths one. The Blackdown team agreed to give up their freedom when they agreed to Sun's condition to keep the Java source closed. They should have known what they were doing when they made that agreement. I can't bring myself to feel sorry for them. If they were to take their freedom back, and release the Java source without the consent of Sun, I would support them, and feel sorry for them when Sun's lawyers went for their pound of flesh.
-- "This is the Space Age, and we are Here To Go" - W.S.Burroughs
remember, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
also, the actions of a few should not be seen as representative of the entire company, any more than the postings of a few excited newbies on these sorts of discussions should be seen as the general attitude of "open source people."
regarding IBM: it seems to me that it needs all the help it can get in the OS arena, just like SGI and perhaps others to follow. They are not scared, they are desparate, and it is easier to hug an appearent winner than to keep trying...
-- nous
Blackdown has received more publicity than they ever would have if Sun had mentioned them in the first place. Some people are hearing about them for the first time, or are hearing names of Blackdown individuals for the first time.
Don't count these guys out. They'll likely move ahead, and if not - they'll surely be successful whatever they do.
Read my sig if you like, but I'll never see yours, thanks to Discussions, Viewing, Disable sigs...
Just a few little words in Sun's initial press release could have stopped all this bad feeling.
Until the big coparations realise that the majority of people who code for GNU/linux do so for the thrill of seeing their work being used by others and getting credit/respect for their abilities as programmers.
As numerous people have pointed out, the BlackDown team don't have a problem with Sun releasing their code as Sun's own, after all they agreed to the SCSL, but they do want to get recognition for the hours/weeks/months/years they put into getting a usable Java implementation under GNU/Linux.
I guess we should all start saying thanks to people who have spent their own time coding something that we use.
Iggy