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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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.