So please explain how A) it's awful that they're offering an alternative to Linux, alongside of Linux;
It's not awful, merely stupid of them because it's not going to work.
and B) how this is so much worse than what any other systems company is doing? IBM offers AIX, z/OS and "i" as an alternative to Linux. HP offers HP-UX, OpenVMS, and Tru64 UNIX as an alternative to Linux.
IBM and HP have released plenty of kernel code, and they have done so under a license that is Linux compatible, Sun has not.
The difference seems to be that Sun is open sourcing their alternative to Linux. The bastards.
No, the difference is that Sun is being dishonest. If Sun just had remained a closed source vendor, nobody would care.
It's causing a major headache for lecturers who say it is almost impossible to detect.
Maybe those lecturers should assign coursework that can't be done by a rent-a-coder in India.
To put it differently, if you're going to a university where the assignments can be outsourced to India for $10, you aren't learning the material you need in order to be globally competitive. Your best bet is to just leave.
No, unlike the wonderful world of non-C systems programming languages, of which there were quite a few: Cedar, Mesa, Modula, etc.
Or maybe you're talking about VB or C#...
Well, thank you for being such a good representative of the industry and illustrating why we keep getting stuck with lousy choices like C++, Java, DOS, Windows, etc.
I appreciate how much effort it must have taken for Sun to move this far on open source. Nevertheless, I think Sun is still screwing up.
Solaris, for example, is being positioned as an alternative to Linux: it's "pick us or pick Linux". From an open source point of view, it would be better if Sun picked a license that allowed the best parts of Solaris and Linux to be combined, and for end users to decide what those best parts are.
For Java, Sun still has most of the control, they have torpedoed attempts to certify Apache-licensed implementations as Java compliant, and their dual licensing scheme for Sun Java means that the project just isn't run the way an open source project ought to be run.
In the short term, Sun's behavior is disruptive for open source, but sadly not in the positive newspeak sense, but in the sense of merely annoying a lot of people for no good reason.
In the long term, Sun is going to lose with Solaris and Java if they persist in their take-it-or-leave-it approach to open source. If they want the technologies to survive in some form, they need to allow a mix-and-match approach; that's what open source is really all about.
If you can catch dumb criminals, why shouldn't you ?
Because it means giving up a lot of liberties and accepting a lot of risk for law-abiding citizens in exchange for essentially no improvement in the safety of children.
In terms of risk, ask yourself: are you really sure that none of the images in your browser cache might be interpreted as child pornography? Remember, you need not even have seen or clicked on the image: browsers can prefetch images for you, and Javascript can load images behind your back. And it doesn't have to be actual child pornography, it merely has to look like it.
A child pornographer could make the same statement.
So? In order for border inspection of files to be an effective means against child pornography, we'd have to outlaw encryption and stop cross-border Internet traffic. And even then, we'd still be left with the fact that border agents simply are not qualified to make determinations about obscenity or pornography, child or otherwise.
Not implying anything,
I am, however, implying something: I think bringing up the "child pornography" argument is moronic. A bunch of ineffective and unproven policies like this are not going to help our children, but they are going to harm our democracy and cost us dearly in terms of tourism and business.
Setting a cap on memory usage isn't a good solution, IMHO -- using well-designed memory handling that proactively frees memory seems to me to be a far better solution than a cap and garbage collection model.
Well, it may seem to you, but it isn't.
What you call a "cap" is an in-memory cache. If you "proactively free memory", you get rid of stuff in the cache, and then, well, it's not cached anymore.
As opposed to other software like Gimp and even Linux itself, where there's no commercial competition?
Yes, as opposed to them. Thos
As opposed to pure GPL which is entirely [free of this risk] for commercial licensees?
Yes, the GPL is indeed entirely free of the risk of a commercial licensor going out of business or changing their business model.
Each has its own degree of "corporate interest", but once the source code is free then anyone can do the same.
Yes, for those projects that is true. For Sun Java, it is not. Sun can release new commercial versions of their Java implementation, I cannot. Therefore, I cannot do "the same" as Sun.
It is due to corporate science being run according to a business model
Corporate science is only one aspect of the problem, and I'm not even convinced it's a major one. Even in computer science, biology, or physics in areas where no corporations are involved, people are primarily out for publications and citations, and they will do anything to get them.
The reason isn't the corporations, the reason is cut-throat tenure and funding systems, and that's a problem scientists have created for themselves.
Also, as some other people mentioned, what about some of the other technologies like Qt and MySQL that are dual-licensed? Are they somehow not open because they're dual-licensing?
Look, let's stop trying to argue about vague terms like "open" and be precise. What do you mean?
Sun Java, Qt, and MySQL are all distributed under an open source license, but the implications of that for users are quite different than they are for other software packages.
Sun Java, Qt, and MySQL are hard to fork, because if you tried, you'd be competing against companies that can actually license them commercially.
Sun Java, Qt, and MySQL are all controlled by companies that determine the evolution of those platforms based on their own corporate interests, and because those systems are hard to fork, there is little other people can do about it.
And, most importantly, Sun Java, Qt, and MySQL are risky for users needing a commercial license because these companies have the same ability to squeeze those users as if it was a closed source application.
So, Sun Java, Qt, and MySQL are nominally open source, but they still lack many of the desirable features that open source projects ought to have.
It's not that any dual license is bad, it's that a GPL+commercial dual license tends to lead to problems. LGPL+commercial is less of a problem, and GPL+BSD isn't a problem at all.
I think Google should have focused first on getting something out quickly: partner with just HTC and T-Mobile, for example, and get a single model out. That would have built buzz and given developers something to work with.
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
If they say "no", I can fork the project and compete with them. That's why we have Xorg instead of Xfree86 now.
I can't do that with Java. I can fork it under the GPL, but I can't compete with Sun because Sun can also license their copy commercially.
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.
You must be kidding. Java is one of the most bloated platforms in history, and is exactly because Sun can do as they please with the platform. Such an accumulation of crap would never have been tolerated by a regular open source project.
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.
Yes, but they could give up those rights by no dual licensing it and accepting contributions under the GPL.
The fact that they do everything in their power to retain those rights is what makes Java non-free and what make Java not an open source project, even though it is under an open source license.
The last thing they wanted was a President that became a tyrant.
That's why they can impeach him or withdraw his funding. They can't micromanage him, however.
Our system is specifically designed to make it as difficult as possible to get anything done. Not only do both the House and Senate have to have a majority on everything, it then has to get past the President. The President has very limited power when it comes to passing laws
Yes, but he has nearly unlimited power to make executive decisions.
This Democratically controlled Congress has been well within their power to stop funding for the action in Iraq - forcing the President's hand. They just haven't done it.
That would be political suicide because it would be perceived as leaving the troops high and dry.
The only person who can realistically stop the war is the president.
If Sun has copyright, they have special rights regardless of how many licenses they release Java under.
But that's the problem: Sun has copyright; nobody else does.
That's different from projects like Linux, where lots of people hold copyright to a code base, and where all the contributors and users are on equal footing.
(is perl less free because of dual licensing? KDE?)
I don't know; I haven't looked at their licenses. I have looked at the Java license.
Sun Java will be available under a GPL license, but it remains dual-licensed. Dual licensing means that Sun still has special rights and Sun is still the only company that can control the future of Java.
Sun's Java will only truly be free if Sun drops dual licensing and releases it under a single license for everybody (GPL, Apache, LGPL, whatever).
Slashdot Mirror
So please explain how A) it's awful that they're offering an alternative to Linux, alongside of Linux;
It's not awful, merely stupid of them because it's not going to work.
and B) how this is so much worse than what any other systems company is doing? IBM offers AIX, z/OS and "i" as an alternative to Linux. HP offers HP-UX, OpenVMS, and Tru64 UNIX as an alternative to Linux.
IBM and HP have released plenty of kernel code, and they have done so under a license that is Linux compatible, Sun has not.
The difference seems to be that Sun is open sourcing their alternative to Linux. The bastards.
No, the difference is that Sun is being dishonest. If Sun just had remained a closed source vendor, nobody would care.
It's causing a major headache for lecturers who say it is almost impossible to detect.
Maybe those lecturers should assign coursework that can't be done by a rent-a-coder in India.
To put it differently, if you're going to a university where the assignments can be outsourced to India for $10, you aren't learning the material you need in order to be globally competitive. Your best bet is to just leave.
Amazing research! With two screens, you can display two facing pages, or two different documents, and you can even rotate pages.
What amazing innovations will they think of next?
It would make more sense to maintain a fork of the language for numerical applications.
We do. It's called "C++". It's just that foolish people keep trying to use it for writing GUIs and other silly things.
Unlike the wonderful world of Java eh?
No, unlike the wonderful world of non-C systems programming languages, of which there were quite a few: Cedar, Mesa, Modula, etc.
Or maybe you're talking about VB or C#...
Well, thank you for being such a good representative of the industry and illustrating why we keep getting stuck with lousy choices like C++, Java, DOS, Windows, etc.
They were probably the right objectives for the place (Bell Labs) and time (1979) it was conceived.
I don't think so. There were efficient, high-level languages around at the time. Simula-67 itself was one of them.
So, an efficient, object oriented version of C was probably exactly what was needed.
What was needed was an efficient object oriented systems programming language. The mistake was tying it so closely to C.
Likewise, I think operator overloading is another example of trying to do too much.
Without operator overloading, C++ wouldn't have been used for scientific computing, and it would probably not be around at all anymore.
what all good code-writers should think about when using the language he created."
Mostly, I try to meditate on being calm when writing C++ code, because the language is so full of infuriating and avoidable design problems.
Ponytail-guy and his pals have basically given away the crown jewels and have not been able to "monetize" any sort of decent return for their efforts.
And what brilliant strategy would you have recommended? What should they have "monetized" and how?
I appreciate how much effort it must have taken for Sun to move this far on open source. Nevertheless, I think Sun is still screwing up.
Solaris, for example, is being positioned as an alternative to Linux: it's "pick us or pick Linux". From an open source point of view, it would be better if Sun picked a license that allowed the best parts of Solaris and Linux to be combined, and for end users to decide what those best parts are.
For Java, Sun still has most of the control, they have torpedoed attempts to certify Apache-licensed implementations as Java compliant, and their dual licensing scheme for Sun Java means that the project just isn't run the way an open source project ought to be run.
In the short term, Sun's behavior is disruptive for open source, but sadly not in the positive newspeak sense, but in the sense of merely annoying a lot of people for no good reason.
In the long term, Sun is going to lose with Solaris and Java if they persist in their take-it-or-leave-it approach to open source. If they want the technologies to survive in some form, they need to allow a mix-and-match approach; that's what open source is really all about.
If you can catch dumb criminals, why shouldn't you ?
Because it means giving up a lot of liberties and accepting a lot of risk for law-abiding citizens in exchange for essentially no improvement in the safety of children.
In terms of risk, ask yourself: are you really sure that none of the images in your browser cache might be interpreted as child pornography? Remember, you need not even have seen or clicked on the image: browsers can prefetch images for you, and Javascript can load images behind your back. And it doesn't have to be actual child pornography, it merely has to look like it.
I think attitudes like yours are dangerous.
A child pornographer could make the same statement.
So? In order for border inspection of files to be an effective means against child pornography, we'd have to outlaw encryption and stop cross-border Internet traffic. And even then, we'd still be left with the fact that border agents simply are not qualified to make determinations about obscenity or pornography, child or otherwise.
Not implying anything,
I am, however, implying something: I think bringing up the "child pornography" argument is moronic. A bunch of ineffective and unproven policies like this are not going to help our children, but they are going to harm our democracy and cost us dearly in terms of tourism and business.
To put it bluntly: you don't know what you're talking about. Leave the design of memory managment strategies to people who understand them.
Setting a cap on memory usage isn't a good solution, IMHO -- using well-designed memory handling that proactively frees memory seems to me to be a far better solution than a cap and garbage collection model.
Well, it may seem to you, but it isn't.
What you call a "cap" is an in-memory cache. If you "proactively free memory", you get rid of stuff in the cache, and then, well, it's not cached anymore.
As opposed to other software like Gimp and even Linux itself, where there's no commercial competition?
Yes, as opposed to them. Thos
As opposed to pure GPL which is entirely [free of this risk] for commercial licensees?
Yes, the GPL is indeed entirely free of the risk of a commercial licensor going out of business or changing their business model.
Each has its own degree of "corporate interest", but once the source code is free then anyone can do the same.
Yes, for those projects that is true. For Sun Java, it is not. Sun can release new commercial versions of their Java implementation, I cannot. Therefore, I cannot do "the same" as Sun.
It is due to corporate science being run according to a business model
Corporate science is only one aspect of the problem, and I'm not even convinced it's a major one. Even in computer science, biology, or physics in areas where no corporations are involved, people are primarily out for publications and citations, and they will do anything to get them.
The reason isn't the corporations, the reason is cut-throat tenure and funding systems, and that's a problem scientists have created for themselves.
Also, as some other people mentioned, what about some of the other technologies like Qt and MySQL that are dual-licensed? Are they somehow not open because they're dual-licensing?
Look, let's stop trying to argue about vague terms like "open" and be precise. What do you mean?
Sun Java, Qt, and MySQL are all distributed under an open source license, but the implications of that for users are quite different than they are for other software packages.
Sun Java, Qt, and MySQL are hard to fork, because if you tried, you'd be competing against companies that can actually license them commercially.
Sun Java, Qt, and MySQL are all controlled by companies that determine the evolution of those platforms based on their own corporate interests, and because those systems are hard to fork, there is little other people can do about it.
And, most importantly, Sun Java, Qt, and MySQL are risky for users needing a commercial license because these companies have the same ability to squeeze those users as if it was a closed source application.
So, Sun Java, Qt, and MySQL are nominally open source, but they still lack many of the desirable features that open source projects ought to have.
It's not that any dual license is bad, it's that a GPL+commercial dual license tends to lead to problems. LGPL+commercial is less of a problem, and GPL+BSD isn't a problem at all.
I think Google should have focused first on getting something out quickly: partner with just HTC and T-Mobile, for example, and get a single model out. That would have built buzz and given developers something to work with.
Sounds like sour grapes from someone with Microsoft stock.
Seriously, what Google calls a "beta" is like a 2.0 or 3.0 release from Microsoft.
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
If they say "no", I can fork the project and compete with them. That's why we have Xorg instead of Xfree86 now.
I can't do that with Java. I can fork it under the GPL, but I can't compete with Sun because Sun can also license their copy commercially.
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.
You must be kidding. Java is one of the most bloated platforms in history, and is exactly because Sun can do as they please with the platform. Such an accumulation of crap would never have been tolerated by a regular open source project.
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.
Yes, but they could give up those rights by no dual licensing it and accepting contributions under the GPL.
The fact that they do everything in their power to retain those rights is what makes Java non-free and what make Java not an open source project, even though it is under an open source license.
The last thing they wanted was a President that became a tyrant.
That's why they can impeach him or withdraw his funding. They can't micromanage him, however.
Our system is specifically designed to make it as difficult as possible to get anything done. Not only do both the House and Senate have to have a majority on everything, it then has to get past the President. The President has very limited power when it comes to passing laws
Yes, but he has nearly unlimited power to make executive decisions.
This Democratically controlled Congress has been well within their power to stop funding for the action in Iraq - forcing the President's hand. They just haven't done it.
That would be political suicide because it would be perceived as leaving the troops high and dry.
The only person who can realistically stop the war is the president.
If Sun has copyright, they have special rights regardless of how many licenses they release Java under.
But that's the problem: Sun has copyright; nobody else does.
That's different from projects like Linux, where lots of people hold copyright to a code base, and where all the contributors and users are on equal footing.
(is perl less free because of dual licensing? KDE?)
I don't know; I haven't looked at their licenses. I have looked at the Java license.
Once the GPL version is out there it's out there, having a closed source licence version won't stop that.
Yes it will, because Sun is the only company not constrained by the GPL and therefore has a huge commercial advantage over any potential competitor.
Sun Java will be available under a GPL license, but it remains dual-licensed. Dual licensing means that Sun still has special rights and Sun is still the only company that can control the future of Java.
Sun's Java will only truly be free if Sun drops dual licensing and releases it under a single license for everybody (GPL, Apache, LGPL, whatever).
then go cry to their geek friends deserve no sympathy. They should be smart enough to figure it out.
Yes, I say let them fix their virus-ridden Windows partitions themselves!