Most successful open source projects have some kind of corporate backing, whether it be developers, funding or both. Linux has IBM, HP, RedHat, etc. Sun sponsors and manages a number of open source projects.
The community behind FreeBSD have put together what seems to be (I've never used it for more than a few minutes at a time) a solid server operating system whose command-line code forms part of the basis of what is IMO the best consumer operating system (OS X). From what I understand, this is due to a small but devoted group of developers.
Still, not to bemoan the FreeBSD community's efforts, but I'm wondering if there's some kind of corporate backing, seeing as I'm certain several companies use it in critical production situations.
There was nothing about this in the Wikipedia entry.
Secondly, Firefox is my favourite browser, and I use it as my default both at work on my Windows workstation and at home on my Mac.
Having said that, with two corporate giants with deep pockets, and their respective browsers making solid improvements with every version, I'm wondering if it's just a matter of time before Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome become better than Firefox, which is essentially a community effort. That's not to say anything bad about the excellent work that Mozilla's programmers have done with Firefox, but they're doing so by drawing on fewer resources than those two large corporations.
Granted, Microsoft also has a lot of resources to draw from, but they also let IE stagnate because they thought they had a browser monopoly.
If Minnesota already has some form of state-run gambling, then I understand (but don't codone) their motivations for attempting to ban online gambling. However, if gambling is totally illegal in the state, then I have no idea why they would want to ban the practise. What would they stand to gain?
Does the state even have the authority to do this? Internet access is presumably under the jurisdiction of the federal government and the FCC.
Until XP dies, IE 6 won't die. Too many companies are scared to death of losing backward compatibility, and all those that have turned off updates will never clobber IE 6 with IE 8.
I know I'm late to the party, but there's no way in hell my company will accept this update. They're a stingy bank and they don't want to take any chances on any "risky" updates if there's even the slightest chance of breaking one of our intranet sites. They don't even give developers admin rights to their own workstations.
The number one reason why Sun bought StarDivision in 1999 was because, at the time, Sun had something approaching forty-two thousand employees. Pretty much every one of them had to have both a Unix workstation and a Windows laptop. And it was cheaper to go buy a company that could make a Solaris and Linux desktop productivity suite than it was to buy forty-two thousand licenses from Microsoft. (Simon Phipps, Sun, LUGradio podcast.)
Sun open sourced Star Office because they could, but that was a secondary motivation.
Does Oracle have the same objectives? Probably not, since I imagine their employees have a lot of other software that requires Windows.
Since Oracle doesn't need to use Star/OpenOffice internally, then they have less motivation to control the project that Sun does.
Actually, it sounds like he does, since most of what you said agreed with what he said (as well as the facts).
He said that Java 6 wasn't open source and that it was next to impossible to install it on Linux. That means he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Most of the source code for Java has been released under the GPL.
Most is not all. Java 6 is not open source, even if "most" of it is. Sun seems to get upset if you package up less-than-all of Java so "most" doesn't seem good enough.
OpenJDK 6 passed Sun's TCK, which is what the JCP agrees needs to be done for a runtime to be called "Java". SNMP is not considered essential for this test to pass. The browser plugin is also not considered part of "core" Java. Therefore, Java 6 has been open sourced.
The latest version of OpenJDK 6 is available for installation on Ubuntu and Fedora
The latest version of Java 6 is in the "non-free" repository on Debian and the "multiverse" (equivalent to non-free) on Ubuntu. Which you have to enable separately. GP may have exaggerated the difficulty of installing somewhat, but it's hardly automatic. And yes, there's OpenJDK, but we've already established that that's not the full system.
What's your point? It's possible to run Netbeans and Eclipse on OpenJDK 6, which are two heavy client-side apps. Since OpenJDK 6 has passed the TCK, it's a complete Java runtime. The only things missing are SNMP and the plugin. Since IcedTea has implemented the Java plugin, it's possible to have the full Java experience with OpenJDK 6, which is available on the package managers of many Linux distros.
With the latest version of Ubuntu, it's possible to install the proprietary version of Sun Java 6 without tweaking any settings.
The only parts of the proprietary Java 6 that are missing from OpenJDK 6 are:
The parts that make it non-free? Look, we all know it's mostly there, inches from the finish line, but until the job is done, don't stand there in a flight suit proclaiming "mission accomplished", thank you very much. And don't sit around bashing those who point out that the job isn't done, 'cause they're right. You can say (and I would have agreed with you) that it's close enough for a lot of purposes, and it's easy to exaggerate the amount of work that remains, and making a big deal out of the amount that remains is silly, and all that, yes, but the job still isn't done!
Since it passed the TCK, the job is done. You can also get an open source Java browser plugin. I don't know what you're trying to prove.
IE 8 has specifically omitted support for SVG. Seems Microsoft has a conflict of interest in regard to Silverlight. There's no way an RIA application will be deployed if it doesn't support the browser with a 70%+ installed base.
Besides, JavaFX has distinct advantages over Flash and Silverlight. It integrates seamlessly with server-side Java code. It also shares the same APIs with JavaFX Mobile, which allows mobile and RIA apps to share the same code.
The JavaFX "advantages" are promises that don't yet exist (read the comments in the link).
What are you talking about? JavaFX can already use the Java API and it already has a mobile component. The author of the link you sent me only said that work remains to be done for tooling and performance. There was no mention of work needing to be done to integrate with the Java API or the mobile component, which was introduced with JavaFX 1.1.
There's a reason why I specifically mentioned HTML5. Video, Canvas, Audio, SVG, Networking, Storage, multi-threading, etc. The platform meets and even exceeds the Flash and Silverlight platforms.
P.S. Do development tools exist for these features? Flash/Flex, Silverlight and JavaFX already have development tools and IDEs.
There's a reason why I specifically mentioned HTML5. Video, Canvas, Audio, SVG, Networking, Storage, multi-threading, etc. The platform meets and even exceeds the Flash and Silverlight platforms.
Which browsers have fully implemented these? And how many corporations do you think will deploy intranet webapps that specifically omit support for IE?
This is true. However, the point is to give Java shops the opportunity to move away from Flex. Whatever Microsoft shops choose to do is not Oracle-Sun's concern.
Java is open source. Most of the source code for Java has been released under the GPL.
They started by releasing the JDK 7 code under an open source license. They then backported this code to OpenJDK 6 by removing some of the JDK 7 features and testing it under the JDK 6 TCK (testing kit).
The latest version of OpenJDK 6 is available for installation on Ubuntu and Fedora via their respective package managers.
The only parts of the proprietary Java 6 that are missing from OpenJDK 6 are:
1) SNMP code. 2) Applet/JavaWebStart code (although they're in the process of open sourcing it. 3) Latest bugfixes since JDK 6 Update 7 but these are slowly finding their way to OpenJDK 6.
Please do some basic research before posting your misconceptions as "facts".
HTML/CSS/JavaScript is an insufficient platform for Rich Internet Applications (RIA). Why do you think Flash is still so widely used? It's not just video. It's complex charting, graphics, animations, etc.
If you think Flash and Silverlight are just going to go away, or that IE and its non-standard compliance and lack of SVG are just going to go away, you're dreaming in technicolour. Web standards will eventually hit a wall.
I don't disagree that a lot of functionality (including video) can be implemented by all browsers that implement that new web standards, but it won't enough.
Besides, JavaFX has distinct advantages over Flash and Silverlight. It integrates seamlessly with server-side Java code. It also shares the same APIs with JavaFX Mobile, which allows mobile and RIA apps to share the same code.
Besides, do you really want the rich web to turn into a battle between two proprietary frameworks? Parts of JavaFX are already open source, and Sun is planning to open source the rest.
I know I'm a little biased, but I find OS X to still be the best consumer OS. This is not to say bad things about Windows 7 and Ubuntu, but those tw OS's are simply not at the same level in terms of usability.
What limits Ubuntu and various other Linux distros is the GNOME user interface. I know KDE fans will beg to differ, but the recent changes to KDE 4 took a long time to stabilize.
What limits GNOME and KDE is that those environments traditionally offered copies of the Windows UI with subtle differences. Granted, they've distinguished themselves more in recent years, but artifacts of the Windows UI, such as menubars in the windows, no grouping of applications (ex ATL-TAB is for windows, not apps, not possible to close apps, etc), and the broken taskbar paradigm (vs the Dock, which Windows 7 has emulated) remain.
OS X was built from the ground up with a totally different UI design from Windows. As such, it actually groups applications together, and application windows follow logically. There are more options for task or window switch than just ALT-TAB (ex Expose), and installing and uninstalling applications is much easier with.app folders.
Until Ubuntu and other Unix variants come up with better (or at least substantially different) UI design paradigms than past versions of Windows, it will be limited in how well they can compete with OS X in terms of usability.
I'm not trolling, just asking an honest question because I'm genuinely curious.
If Obama were to choose an iPhone, could it be made as secure as the solution implemented for his Blackberry?
As far as I know, the iPhone doesn't yet match the Blackberry in security and enterprise users, even though some Fortune 500 companies have started using it.
Assuming these guys are among the best lawyers in the country, who would you rather they work for?
I guess it all depends on who you are. If you're a heavy internet user (downloading illegally or not), you probably would rather they work for the U.S. government. If you happen to fit the wrong demographic group, you might prefer that they work for the RIAA.
Doesn't seem to be a priority in our modern capitalistic, manufacturing-intensive civilization. It seems that things are built deliberately to break down nowadays. Appliances that used to last decades now seem to break down in less than 10 years.
With all the environmental problems and the scarcity of resources, I welcome efforts to make things more durable in order to encourage reuse of resources. Sadly, this lesson seems to be lost on most people.
First of all, I honestly haven't used Vista enough to form any meaningful opinion on it whatsoever. My experience is limiting to trying it on on demo machines at FutureShop and BestBuy.
Having said that, I have to use XP every day at work, and I find it to be an ancient OS, almost 8 years old. The UI is cluttered and inefficient compared to OS X, and I find myself yearning for something with better task management. The Windows 7 taskbar, as well as the better security, would be a welcome fix, not to mention a version of IE higher than 6.
I believe the fact that most businesses are still using XP is less an indictment of Microsoft as it is the complacency and risk-aversion of most companies. There seems to be a fear of change and new technology, even when the efficiency gains are real. My project is still on Java 1.4, even though it's no longer supported by Sun, and there are no plans to upgrade.
There's nothing wrong with stockpiling patents. The alleged problem is that Apple refuses to grant them royalty free to the W3C, undermining the open standards that Apple professes to protect.
First of all, I'm not entirely sold on the source of this story, since it does come from Opera's website.
Assuming this story is true, and while I normally rush to Apple's defence, this is totally unacceptable. This sort of patent stockpiling is getting as bad as that of Microsoft or IBM. Worse, at least IBM uses some of their patents to protect open source projects (and I'm not an IBM fan by any means).
I'm not sure what their purpose is, other than to give their browser a leg up over those of their competitors.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, I'm not trolling.
Most successful open source projects have some kind of corporate backing, whether it be developers, funding or both. Linux has IBM, HP, RedHat, etc. Sun sponsors and manages a number of open source projects.
The community behind FreeBSD have put together what seems to be (I've never used it for more than a few minutes at a time) a solid server operating system whose command-line code forms part of the basis of what is IMO the best consumer operating system (OS X). From what I understand, this is due to a small but devoted group of developers.
Still, not to bemoan the FreeBSD community's efforts, but I'm wondering if there's some kind of corporate backing, seeing as I'm certain several companies use it in critical production situations.
There was nothing about this in the Wikipedia entry.
Wake me up when Hulu is available outside the U.S.
I didn't RTFA but why no mention of ZFS?
First of all, I'm not trolling.
Secondly, Firefox is my favourite browser, and I use it as my default both at work on my Windows workstation and at home on my Mac.
Having said that, with two corporate giants with deep pockets, and their respective browsers making solid improvements with every version, I'm wondering if it's just a matter of time before Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome become better than Firefox, which is essentially a community effort. That's not to say anything bad about the excellent work that Mozilla's programmers have done with Firefox, but they're doing so by drawing on fewer resources than those two large corporations.
Granted, Microsoft also has a lot of resources to draw from, but they also let IE stagnate because they thought they had a browser monopoly.
If Minnesota already has some form of state-run gambling, then I understand (but don't codone) their motivations for attempting to ban online gambling. However, if gambling is totally illegal in the state, then I have no idea why they would want to ban the practise. What would they stand to gain?
Does the state even have the authority to do this? Internet access is presumably under the jurisdiction of the federal government and the FCC.
Until XP dies, IE 6 won't die. Too many companies are scared to death of losing backward compatibility, and all those that have turned off updates will never clobber IE 6 with IE 8.
I know I'm late to the party, but there's no way in hell my company will accept this update. They're a stingy bank and they don't want to take any chances on any "risky" updates if there's even the slightest chance of breaking one of our intranet sites. They don't even give developers admin rights to their own workstations.
Sun bought StarOffice to save money on Windows licenses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_office#History
The number one reason why Sun bought StarDivision in 1999 was because, at the time, Sun had something approaching forty-two thousand employees. Pretty much every one of them had to have both a Unix workstation and a Windows laptop. And it was cheaper to go buy a company that could make a Solaris and Linux desktop productivity suite than it was to buy forty-two thousand licenses from Microsoft. (Simon Phipps, Sun, LUGradio podcast.)
Sun open sourced Star Office because they could, but that was a secondary motivation.
Does Oracle have the same objectives? Probably not, since I imagine their employees have a lot of other software that requires Windows.
Since Oracle doesn't need to use Star/OpenOffice internally, then they have less motivation to control the project that Sun does.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Actually, it sounds like he does, since most of what you said agreed with what he said (as well as the facts).
He said that Java 6 wasn't open source and that it was next to impossible to install it on Linux. That means he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Most of the source code for Java has been released under the GPL.
Most is not all. Java 6 is not open source, even if "most" of it is. Sun seems to get upset if you package up less-than-all of Java so "most" doesn't seem good enough.
OpenJDK 6 passed Sun's TCK, which is what the JCP agrees needs to be done for a runtime to be called "Java". SNMP is not considered essential for this test to pass. The browser plugin is also not considered part of "core" Java. Therefore, Java 6 has been open sourced.
The latest version of OpenJDK 6 is available for installation on Ubuntu and Fedora
The latest version of Java 6 is in the "non-free" repository on Debian and the "multiverse" (equivalent to non-free) on Ubuntu. Which you have to enable separately. GP may have exaggerated the difficulty of installing somewhat, but it's hardly automatic. And yes, there's OpenJDK, but we've already established that that's not the full system.
What's your point? It's possible to run Netbeans and Eclipse on OpenJDK 6, which are two heavy client-side apps. Since OpenJDK 6 has passed the TCK, it's a complete Java runtime. The only things missing are SNMP and the plugin. Since IcedTea has implemented the Java plugin, it's possible to have the full Java experience with OpenJDK 6, which is available on the package managers of many Linux distros.
With the latest version of Ubuntu, it's possible to install the proprietary version of Sun Java 6 without tweaking any settings.
The only parts of the proprietary Java 6 that are missing from OpenJDK 6 are:
The parts that make it non-free? Look, we all know it's mostly there, inches from the finish line, but until the job is done, don't stand there in a flight suit proclaiming "mission accomplished", thank you very much. And don't sit around bashing those who point out that the job isn't done, 'cause they're right. You can say (and I would have agreed with you) that it's close enough for a lot of purposes, and it's easy to exaggerate the amount of work that remains, and making a big deal out of the amount that remains is silly, and all that, yes, but the job still isn't done!
Since it passed the TCK, the job is done. You can also get an open source Java browser plugin. I don't know what you're trying to prove.
As much as I love Netbeans, I have to say that their JavaScript debugger is still a little rusty. Hopefully they'll iron out the kinks for 6.7.
IE 8 has specifically omitted support for SVG. Seems Microsoft has a conflict of interest in regard to Silverlight. There's no way an RIA application will be deployed if it doesn't support the browser with a 70%+ installed base.
The JavaFX "advantages" are promises that don't yet exist (read the comments in the link).
What are you talking about? JavaFX can already use the Java API and it already has a mobile component. The author of the link you sent me only said that work remains to be done for tooling and performance. There was no mention of work needing to be done to integrate with the Java API or the mobile component, which was introduced with JavaFX 1.1.
P.S. Do development tools exist for these features? Flash/Flex, Silverlight and JavaFX already have development tools and IDEs.
Which browsers have fully implemented these? And how many corporations do you think will deploy intranet webapps that specifically omit support for IE?
This is true. However, the point is to give Java shops the opportunity to move away from Flex. Whatever Microsoft shops choose to do is not Oracle-Sun's concern.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Java is open source. Most of the source code for Java has been released under the GPL.
They started by releasing the JDK 7 code under an open source license. They then backported this code to OpenJDK 6 by removing some of the JDK 7 features and testing it under the JDK 6 TCK (testing kit).
The latest version of OpenJDK 6 is available for installation on Ubuntu and Fedora via their respective package managers.
The only parts of the proprietary Java 6 that are missing from OpenJDK 6 are:
1) SNMP code.
2) Applet/JavaWebStart code (although they're in the process of open sourcing it.
3) Latest bugfixes since JDK 6 Update 7 but these are slowly finding their way to OpenJDK 6.
Please do some basic research before posting your misconceptions as "facts".
HTML/CSS/JavaScript is an insufficient platform for Rich Internet Applications (RIA). Why do you think Flash is still so widely used? It's not just video. It's complex charting, graphics, animations, etc.
If you think Flash and Silverlight are just going to go away, or that IE and its non-standard compliance and lack of SVG are just going to go away, you're dreaming in technicolour. Web standards will eventually hit a wall.
I don't disagree that a lot of functionality (including video) can be implemented by all browsers that implement that new web standards, but it won't enough.
Besides, JavaFX has distinct advantages over Flash and Silverlight. It integrates seamlessly with server-side Java code. It also shares the same APIs with JavaFX Mobile, which allows mobile and RIA apps to share the same code.
Besides, do you really want the rich web to turn into a battle between two proprietary frameworks? Parts of JavaFX are already open source, and Sun is planning to open source the rest.
I know I'm a little biased, but I find OS X to still be the best consumer OS. This is not to say bad things about Windows 7 and Ubuntu, but those tw OS's are simply not at the same level in terms of usability.
What limits Ubuntu and various other Linux distros is the GNOME user interface. I know KDE fans will beg to differ, but the recent changes to KDE 4 took a long time to stabilize.
What limits GNOME and KDE is that those environments traditionally offered copies of the Windows UI with subtle differences. Granted, they've distinguished themselves more in recent years, but artifacts of the Windows UI, such as menubars in the windows, no grouping of applications (ex ATL-TAB is for windows, not apps, not possible to close apps, etc), and the broken taskbar paradigm (vs the Dock, which Windows 7 has emulated) remain.
OS X was built from the ground up with a totally different UI design from Windows. As such, it actually groups applications together, and application windows follow logically. There are more options for task or window switch than just ALT-TAB (ex Expose), and installing and uninstalling applications is much easier with .app folders.
Until Ubuntu and other Unix variants come up with better (or at least substantially different) UI design paradigms than past versions of Windows, it will be limited in how well they can compete with OS X in terms of usability.
I'm not trolling, just asking an honest question because I'm genuinely curious.
If Obama were to choose an iPhone, could it be made as secure as the solution implemented for his Blackberry?
As far as I know, the iPhone doesn't yet match the Blackberry in security and enterprise users, even though some Fortune 500 companies have started using it.
Assuming these guys are among the best lawyers in the country, who would you rather they work for?
I guess it all depends on who you are. If you're a heavy internet user (downloading illegally or not), you probably would rather they work for the U.S. government. If you happen to fit the wrong demographic group, you might prefer that they work for the RIAA.
Doesn't seem to be a priority in our modern capitalistic, manufacturing-intensive civilization. It seems that things are built deliberately to break down nowadays. Appliances that used to last decades now seem to break down in less than 10 years.
With all the environmental problems and the scarcity of resources, I welcome efforts to make things more durable in order to encourage reuse of resources. Sadly, this lesson seems to be lost on most people.
Because I don't have admin rights on my workstation.
First of all, I honestly haven't used Vista enough to form any meaningful opinion on it whatsoever. My experience is limiting to trying it on on demo machines at FutureShop and BestBuy.
Having said that, I have to use XP every day at work, and I find it to be an ancient OS, almost 8 years old. The UI is cluttered and inefficient compared to OS X, and I find myself yearning for something with better task management. The Windows 7 taskbar, as well as the better security, would be a welcome fix, not to mention a version of IE higher than 6.
I believe the fact that most businesses are still using XP is less an indictment of Microsoft as it is the complacency and risk-aversion of most companies. There seems to be a fear of change and new technology, even when the efficiency gains are real. My project is still on Java 1.4, even though it's no longer supported by Sun, and there are no plans to upgrade.
There's nothing wrong with stockpiling patents. The alleged problem is that Apple refuses to grant them royalty free to the W3C, undermining the open standards that Apple professes to protect.
First of all, I'm not entirely sold on the source of this story, since it does come from Opera's website.
Assuming this story is true, and while I normally rush to Apple's defence, this is totally unacceptable. This sort of patent stockpiling is getting as bad as that of Microsoft or IBM. Worse, at least IBM uses some of their patents to protect open source projects (and I'm not an IBM fan by any means).
I'm not sure what their purpose is, other than to give their browser a leg up over those of their competitors.