Slashdot Mirror
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.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
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 ?
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
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.
Yes, I think Sun will become more predatory and MS will become less so.
Companies seem to become protective when they think of themselves as being technology companies rather service companies or manufacturers.
Microsoft is strongly assocciated with Windows. Therefore it acts strongly to defend and promote windows technology. Sun is not strongly assocciated with Unix - unix is a technology that Sun is interested in, but that Sun does not own particularly - thus with Solaris we see a good deal of openess and sanity, and little pressure.
But Java is Sun's Windows. And Sun is starting to behave with Java just as MS did with DOS. When you think 'Java' you think 'Sun' even though as a language spec it is theoretically available from many places. Same with the old dos - you thought 'DOS' and thought 'Microsoft' evne though IBM, Corel and so on were in the game.
Now, Sun wants it to stay that way. And that's why they are getting agressive.
IBM don't make much fuss about technology these days. It used to me 'computer' == 'IBM' but those days are gone. Even IBM's technologies(db2, AS/400, lotus) are not strongly assocciated with them. IBM are more of a service company now - they provide end to end solutions for all sorts of things. IBM are never going to try to own apache or own Linux, because they have moved on from the 'lets invent a cool technology and flog it for everything we can get' mentality.
Sun are in a tight spot. The hardware is good, but still expensive and under threat from IA64, Merced and friends. Solaris is good, but it's under threat from Linux, OS X, even NT. Sun didn't have much else until it created Java and bought Netscape.
Now, we can all see how protective Sun are getting over Java, and I can tell you that if you talk to them about Netscape stuff, they are just as bullish and aggressive about it. You think "Web" and you think "Netscape" - and Sun is trying to buy into that assocciation.
-----
Note: I currently work for IBM. I don't think I'm biased, but you may keep that in mind when reading this comment.
From what I have seen, IBM tentatively embraced Linux from both a hardware and a software standpoint roughly one year ago, and their embrace has only gotten stronger since. Up until that point there were Linux 'niches' in IBM, but it never saw the widespread acceptance that it enjoys right now. It all began with the Apache/WebSphere open source deal and seemed to snowball from there.
As far as hardware is concerned, I know of several groups in my area whose sole job is to test Linux on various hardware platforms. That began with the Netfinity servers, but has quickly spread to many of the other platform types.
On the software front... I currently support a group of 400+ developers that primarily work in Java, VA C++, and VA Generator. Right now they're gearing up to port all kinds of apps to Linux, and are hiring Linux support techs for their own internal support. These folks were involved in the Apache/WebSphere deal. (Wish you could have seen their IP Law department when all of that happened! Very interesting.)
All indications (to me) are that IBM's relationship with Linux is only going to get stronger in the future. I've never seen the slightest deviation from that path in the past year, and I hope it will continue.