The page you link to has no mention of the CDDL. It does say: "Please note however, that the Debian project decides on particular packages rather than licenses in abstract, and the lists are general explanations."
If she spoke about a decision she is knowledgeable of that was made prior to her departure then her words are indeed applicable.
Her characterisation of the views of the Sun engineers is way too sweeping. The Solaris team chose a Mozilla-style license mainly because of the need to mix binary-only and open source code in the build from day one for licensing reasons, something prevented by use of the GPL if the result was to be redistributable.
I'm sure there were individuals with other motives (after all, the world of Free software is full of differences of opinion, especially the part where old-time BSD hackers hang out) but in the end it was pragmatics that won.
The guy is way overpaid, with a salary more than 200 times that of the average worker in his firm, not even including his unwarranted pension, benefits, protection from lawsuits for criminal actions, and stock options he backdates for the best strike price.
Who are you talking about here? Certainly not about me, as my compensation package is not publicly reported (and you have it totally wrong). Your biases are showing rather too clearly here. If you meant me you should remember you are libelling a real person who hangs out on Slashdot, not a corporate concept that can be whipped forever without bleeding.
To be clear, and as Dana Blankenhorn was written, the actual words I said in the keynote were describing how F/OSS works, using a model remarkably like Benkler's, and the reference to capitalism was a dig at Microsoft. Like so many posters here, you have joined an instinctive pile-on against Sun rather than asking whether the report-of-a-report is actually accurate.
Yes, you're missing the point of what I'm saying - I in fact agree with you. What I am saying is that, in a world where one can no longer charge for the right to use software, the only place there is left to earn a living is by providing value to the software user at the point where they need it. I have explained this in detail before but essentially what I my "Software Market 3.0" point says is that once Freedom 0 is guaranteed, business models based on restrictions on use can no longer work, and all business models available in the F/OSS future are based on delivering value - service, support, bug-fixing and so on - at the point where the customer can no longer provide those things themselves based on skills. The whole point of my job is to help Sun transition into that F/OSS future.
I am fascinated by the words you are putting into my mouth here. The things you claim I said are pretty much the opposite of what I believe - I suppose that's what happens when you use reported speech from a clueless journalist as truth. The journalist really didn't understand what I was saying.
He clearly means that it should be okay to not 'share' code as long as the commons is 'enriched'.
Absolutely not. In the talk I explain clearly that those who do not share their work lose out. Keeping source to yourself benefits no-one and the whole point of that part of the talk was to explain why attempting to withhold work from the community was a mistake.
Here he's arguing that people shouldn't be reimplementing Java (as kaffe, sablevm, etc), but instead 'cooperating' with Sun and working on Sun's proprietary implementation of it.
Absolutely wrong. See above.
The message here is: free software is bad, stop doing it because we don't want to play and that means competing implementations which is bad for everyone.
It's hard to see how you possibly be further from my view. If I thought free software was bad, I would not have licensed the OpenOffice.org source under LGPL, for example, and I would not be directing the staff at Sun to take Sun's entire software portfolio open source.
Well, I decided to stay at Sun because in my personal opinion the company has found a new direction and energy under new leadership, focussing on providing the systems to deliver the next generation of computing in a world where open source is dominant. I think the company is returning to its roots and heading in the right direction at last.To give you some examples:
Sun has refocussed its systems business, producing excellent new server systems both based on Opteron and on SPARC which run both Solaris and GNU/Linux at a highly competitive price point even before the lower running costs are considered. Don't take my word for it - go get one and try it for free.
It has committed to open sourcing its software portfolio in recognition of the shift taking place in the way software is being used, over to the world of "Social Production" that Benkler describes.
Sun has restructured to focus on its core business, into four divisions - software, systems, storage and service - and is managing costs well without losing flexibility.
Doubtless there are plenty on Slashdot who'll come over to throw rocks, but I'm very pleased all this and more is happening as there was a time not so long ago when I would not have been so positive (or keen to stay). As it is (and regardless of what Bruce may say), I'm proud to be running Sun's open source strategy on the watch where Sun's Java implementations all go open source.
In fact I said and routinely say nothing of the sort. Matt Asay does a fine job of summarising the main points I made, which you will note do not include claiming "open source could learn from capitalism". In fact I wonder if the other reporter was even at the same event. Reading through the whole thread here I'm amazed that people feel they can come to any conclusions about what I think based on an intentionally provocative and ill-informed article by a ZDNet reporter who badly summarises the thrust of my keynote in reported speech apparently intended to garner Slashdot coverage.
And I disagree with your outdated analysis of Sun, naturally.
I am entirely unsure how this would work in terms of dependancy solving, would it satisfy the same dependancies as the truly free java version or solve different dependancies?
The packages have their own names and thus do not resolve existing dependencies. Packages that wish to create a dependency on sun-java5-jre on Ubuntu, for example, need to explicitly refer to it (as well as assume Multiverse is enabled). Anyone basing a software installation on the new packages will have to do so explicitly and knowingly. As I said, this new step is simply a convenience (and one I have been asked for repeatedly since I started this job), nothing more.
I only took a brief look at the re-distribution terms of the DLJ and i fail to understand how debian could possibly redistribute it given the responsibilities it places on the distributer.
Do read the FAQ as well - the license was devised in consultation with Ubuntu and Debian community members in order to overcome the poison that had stood in the way of distribution via non-Free. The new license does not pretend to be DFSG Free.
On a related topic I think it's short sighted of Sun not open sourcing Java
I think Sun's latest move is an attempt to discourage harmony/gcj/etc developers working on a free Java by allowing a binary Sun Java to be included in most linux distros.
That's definitely wrong. The reason I and my team developed DLJ and worked with folk from Debian, Ubuntu, Blackdown and Gentoo to develop packages was to finally remove the unnecessary obstacles that had prevented people using Sun's Java SE implementation on GNU/Linux as a non-Free implementation. This in no way changes the need for a Free implementation. I have spoken to friends like Geir at Harmony and Dalibor at Kaffe/Classpath and their resolve to implement a Free version of Java SE is in no way diminished. No, DLJ is just a straightforward fix for an annoying problem, no more and no less.
Not so fast. have you ever read the license? Basically merely by looking at sun JVM code you are agreeing to a lot of things that basically means that you'll never be able to work in a competing VM for the rest of your life, unless you want SUN lawyers coming at your heels.
Have you read the Java licenses recently? They were all updated a while back to be explicitly non-tainting, allowing people to study the reference implementations and still work on other VM implementations. Take a look at the JRL for example, FAQ item 18. They may not be open source but they're not actually out to get you either...
As the two ACs who have been modded out of view said, that particular drug already exists - Jython - and is already supported in Java IDEs like NetBeans (via Coyote) and Eclipse. It's been interesting to see all the old urban myths about the Java platform being slow, bloated, single language and so on doing the rounds again though, I'd almost forgotten about them...
Otherwise why would Apache have the Harmony project to recreate J2SE?
Kaffe and GNU/Classpath are excellent, active projects with dedicated developers. Notably, GNU/Classpath has recently passed the 99% code coverage mark measured against the Java SE specification. Apache Harmony was started because Apache won't use code licensed under the GPL, not because of any technical defect in the work of the Kaffe and GNU/Classpath developers. Harmony is also making excellent progress and has a skilled and active community. Both are committed to making compatible implementations of Java, but licensed under the licenses their communities need.
it just requires spending the money to get it certified.
Actually, FreeBSD were given a license at no cost by Sun, and any not-for-profit organisation with a need for access to a Sun-maintained compliance test kit can get it at no charge. So it's really just a matter of having the motivation to ask.
As it happens there are many projects (200+) to make a variety of languages run on the various implementations of the Java VM. Even Sun supports Jython and Groovy in addition to the Java language. Turns out this was another idea Microsoft copied.
New definition of 'open source', accidental leak, or does the person not have a clue what they are talking about?
None of the above. It was a simple typo, the PR folks missed out the "EE" from "Java EE", it was referring to Glassfish, and becuase of the confidential nature of the release it did not get the usual proof-reading by geeks. I'e asked for it to be fixed.
Linux is Linux, GNU is GNU, and Solaris is Solaris.
In which case, what is Nexenta making? They're using Debian GNU/Linux but with the OpenSolaris kernel - they themselves can't decide between "NexentaOS" and "GNU/OpenSolaris". The result doesn't appear to fit your taxonomy, but still works really well. I think we'll see more and more of these rematches of userland and kernel appearing. Easy assumptions about the superiority of $KERNEL or $USERLAND are way overdue for a challenge.
The Register article has it wrong. As is very clearly documented Sun, together with Red Hat and others, lobbied against software patents in Europe, as I just documented in my blog. I know, because I was the person acting on Sun's behalf.
I'd disagree. As someone who's working on Kaffe and GNU Classpath, and after looking deeply into it decided not to join the JCP I'd say the JCP is hampered by many things:
We've discussed these things many times before, Dalibor, and as you know we largely agree. I'm not saying the JCP is ideal, just that I believe the path through the JCP is much more promising than the path through ECMA, which does not even permit membership by individuals and which, as Redmonk point out, exists to offer "a path which will minimise risk of changes to input specs ".
While there is (as usual) much to agree with in the points you're making, they do reflect a single view of the world, one in which there are no large carnivores, and some of the fixes you suggest would possibly remove freedom from the market at the same time as they appear to give it to the individual FOSS developer. Where we do agree for sure is there's a need for further evolution of the JCP governance, and personally I am more hopeful than you that it will happen.
Rather than teaming with Larry Elliscum, a better move for Sun would be to open Java up to the ECMA/ISO for standardization.
Why exactly would that help? Right now the Java standards are open to input from a wide range of voices, from individual developers through open source communities like Apache to corporations like Oracle and IBM. No voice has overall control, no-one can force through self-serving capabilities and everyone gets to use the specifications royalty free. All of them know their contributions can be implemented as open source yet that the market in which they operate can't be monopolised by any single company.
Sun started ECMA standardisation and then realised half-way through the process that it was going to produce the worst of all worlds; a rubber-stamp for the work Sun had done, with no input from any communities and a freezing of the specs by the ECMA dinosaur, combined with a loss of the ability to enforce the Java trademark and an inevitable embrace-and-extend by companies like Microsoft and IBM. Sun should have worked this out before starting with ECMA but fortunately realised in time and pulled out of the process. The result was the creation of the JCP and the most open, competitive software market the computer industry has yet seen.
Microsoft fully understands the PR value of ECMA and is cynically using it to rubber stamp it's Office 12 XML format to undermine the openness of OpenDocument. That action has done us the good service of showing us just how intellectually bankrupt ECMA actually is. What the Java platform needs is not the destruction ECMA would bring, but rather the further evolution of the JCP, which is working better than pretty much any standards body before it and is only hampered by the public perception of Sun control.
What do you base that opinion on, apart from a desire to find fault? The article cited in the parent says the deal (which apparently happened before SCO filed suit against IBM) was to acquire rights to x86 device drivers, not to Unix. Sun acquired all the rights it needed to Unix in the early 90s, long before SCO had become the Death Star.
It may look bad to those with only retrospect, hostility to Sun and no history, but could equally well represent the last of a series of regular transactions to keep the rights to Solaris up to date. And I'm personally sure that the rights acquired were part of the plans for OpenSolaris
Actually, Sun offers non-profit organisations free access to the test suites for certification via a 'scholarship', and Brazil's SOUJava user group organisation has recently incorporated as a non-profit explicitly to apply for such scholarships for the open source projects working on JVM and library implementations, so I'd say "probably will" rather than "probably never".
Slashdot Mirror
The page you link to has no mention of the CDDL. It does say: "Please note however, that the Debian project decides on particular packages rather than licenses in abstract, and the lists are general explanations."
> The official fsf position is that:
Do you have a source link for this, please?
Her characterisation of the views of the Sun engineers is way too sweeping. The Solaris team chose a Mozilla-style license mainly because of the need to mix binary-only and open source code in the build from day one for licensing reasons, something prevented by use of the GPL if the result was to be redistributable.
I'm sure there were individuals with other motives (after all, the world of Free software is full of differences of opinion, especially the part where old-time BSD hackers hang out) but in the end it was pragmatics that won.
Who are you talking about here? Certainly not about me, as my compensation package is not publicly reported (and you have it totally wrong). Your biases are showing rather too clearly here. If you meant me you should remember you are libelling a real person who hangs out on Slashdot, not a corporate concept that can be whipped forever without bleeding.
To be clear, and as Dana Blankenhorn was written, the actual words I said in the keynote were describing how F/OSS works, using a model remarkably like Benkler's, and the reference to capitalism was a dig at Microsoft. Like so many posters here, you have joined an instinctive pile-on against Sun rather than asking whether the report-of-a-report is actually accurate.
Yes, you're missing the point of what I'm saying - I in fact agree with you. What I am saying is that, in a world where one can no longer charge for the right to use software, the only place there is left to earn a living is by providing value to the software user at the point where they need it. I have explained this in detail before but essentially what I my "Software Market 3.0" point says is that once Freedom 0 is guaranteed, business models based on restrictions on use can no longer work, and all business models available in the F/OSS future are based on delivering value - service, support, bug-fixing and so on - at the point where the customer can no longer provide those things themselves based on skills. The whole point of my job is to help Sun transition into that F/OSS future.
I am fascinated by the words you are putting into my mouth here. The things you claim I said are pretty much the opposite of what I believe - I suppose that's what happens when you use reported speech from a clueless journalist as truth. The journalist really didn't understand what I was saying.
Absolutely not. In the talk I explain clearly that those who do not share their work lose out. Keeping source to yourself benefits no-one and the whole point of that part of the talk was to explain why attempting to withhold work from the community was a mistake.
Absolutely wrong. See above.
It's hard to see how you possibly be further from my view. If I thought free software was bad, I would not have licensed the OpenOffice.org source under LGPL, for example, and I would not be directing the staff at Sun to take Sun's entire software portfolio open source.
Well, I decided to stay at Sun because in my personal opinion the company has found a new direction and energy under new leadership, focussing on providing the systems to deliver the next generation of computing in a world where open source is dominant. I think the company is returning to its roots and heading in the right direction at last.To give you some examples:
Doubtless there are plenty on Slashdot who'll come over to throw rocks, but I'm very pleased all this and more is happening as there was a time not so long ago when I would not have been so positive (or keen to stay). As it is (and regardless of what Bruce may say), I'm proud to be running Sun's open source strategy on the watch where Sun's Java implementations all go open source.
In fact I said and routinely say nothing of the sort. Matt Asay does a fine job of summarising the main points I made, which you will note do not include claiming "open source could learn from capitalism". In fact I wonder if the other reporter was even at the same event. Reading through the whole thread here I'm amazed that people feel they can come to any conclusions about what I think based on an intentionally provocative and ill-informed article by a ZDNet reporter who badly summarises the thrust of my keynote in reported speech apparently intended to garner Slashdot coverage.
And I disagree with your outdated analysis of Sun, naturally.
The packages have their own names and thus do not resolve existing dependencies. Packages that wish to create a dependency on sun-java5-jre on Ubuntu, for example, need to explicitly refer to it (as well as assume Multiverse is enabled). Anyone basing a software installation on the new packages will have to do so explicitly and knowingly. As I said, this new step is simply a convenience (and one I have been asked for repeatedly since I started this job), nothing more.
Do read the FAQ as well - the license was devised in consultation with Ubuntu and Debian community members in order to overcome the poison that had stood in the way of distribution via non-Free. The new license does not pretend to be DFSG Free.
Sun will. Soon.
That's definitely wrong. The reason I and my team developed DLJ and worked with folk from Debian, Ubuntu, Blackdown and Gentoo to develop packages was to finally remove the unnecessary obstacles that had prevented people using Sun's Java SE implementation on GNU/Linux as a non-Free implementation. This in no way changes the need for a Free implementation. I have spoken to friends like Geir at Harmony and Dalibor at Kaffe/Classpath and their resolve to implement a Free version of Java SE is in no way diminished. No, DLJ is just a straightforward fix for an annoying problem, no more and no less.
Have you read the Java licenses recently? They were all updated a while back to be explicitly non-tainting, allowing people to study the reference implementations and still work on other VM implementations. Take a look at the JRL for example, FAQ item 18. They may not be open source but they're not actually out to get you either...
No requests have been declined as far as I am aware, Chris.
As the two ACs who have been modded out of view said, that particular drug already exists - Jython - and is already supported in Java IDEs like NetBeans (via Coyote) and Eclipse. It's been interesting to see all the old urban myths about the Java platform being slow, bloated, single language and so on doing the rounds again though, I'd almost forgotten about them...
Kaffe and GNU/Classpath are excellent, active projects with dedicated developers. Notably, GNU/Classpath has recently passed the 99% code coverage mark measured against the Java SE specification. Apache Harmony was started because Apache won't use code licensed under the GPL, not because of any technical defect in the work of the Kaffe and GNU/Classpath developers. Harmony is also making excellent progress and has a skilled and active community. Both are committed to making compatible implementations of Java, but licensed under the licenses their communities need.
Some communities decide not to apply for ideological reasons, but I'm not aware of any bona fides request being declined, no.
Actually, FreeBSD were given a license at no cost by Sun, and any not-for-profit organisation with a need for access to a Sun-maintained compliance test kit can get it at no charge. So it's really just a matter of having the motivation to ask.
As it happens there are many projects (200+) to make a variety of languages run on the various implementations of the Java VM. Even Sun supports Jython and Groovy in addition to the Java language. Turns out this was another idea Microsoft copied.
None of the above. It was a simple typo, the PR folks missed out the "EE" from "Java EE", it was referring to Glassfish, and becuase of the confidential nature of the release it did not get the usual proof-reading by geeks. I'e asked for it to be fixed.
In which case, what is Nexenta making? They're using Debian GNU/Linux but with the OpenSolaris kernel - they themselves can't decide between "NexentaOS" and "GNU/OpenSolaris". The result doesn't appear to fit your taxonomy, but still works really well. I think we'll see more and more of these rematches of userland and kernel appearing. Easy assumptions about the superiority of $KERNEL or $USERLAND are way overdue for a challenge.
The Register article has it wrong. As is very clearly documented Sun, together with Red Hat and others, lobbied against software patents in Europe, as I just documented in my blog. I know, because I was the person acting on Sun's behalf.
We've discussed these things many times before, Dalibor, and as you know we largely agree. I'm not saying the JCP is ideal, just that I believe the path through the JCP is much more promising than the path through ECMA, which does not even permit membership by individuals and which, as Redmonk point out, exists to offer "a path which will minimise risk of changes to input specs ".
While there is (as usual) much to agree with in the points you're making, they do reflect a single view of the world, one in which there are no large carnivores, and some of the fixes you suggest would possibly remove freedom from the market at the same time as they appear to give it to the individual FOSS developer. Where we do agree for sure is there's a need for further evolution of the JCP governance, and personally I am more hopeful than you that it will happen.
Why exactly would that help? Right now the Java standards are open to input from a wide range of voices, from individual developers through open source communities like Apache to corporations like Oracle and IBM. No voice has overall control, no-one can force through self-serving capabilities and everyone gets to use the specifications royalty free. All of them know their contributions can be implemented as open source yet that the market in which they operate can't be monopolised by any single company.
Sun started ECMA standardisation and then realised half-way through the process that it was going to produce the worst of all worlds; a rubber-stamp for the work Sun had done, with no input from any communities and a freezing of the specs by the ECMA dinosaur, combined with a loss of the ability to enforce the Java trademark and an inevitable embrace-and-extend by companies like Microsoft and IBM. Sun should have worked this out before starting with ECMA but fortunately realised in time and pulled out of the process. The result was the creation of the JCP and the most open, competitive software market the computer industry has yet seen.
Microsoft fully understands the PR value of ECMA and is cynically using it to rubber stamp it's Office 12 XML format to undermine the openness of OpenDocument. That action has done us the good service of showing us just how intellectually bankrupt ECMA actually is. What the Java platform needs is not the destruction ECMA would bring, but rather the further evolution of the JCP, which is working better than pretty much any standards body before it and is only hampered by the public perception of Sun control.
What do you base that opinion on, apart from a desire to find fault? The article cited in the parent says the deal (which apparently happened before SCO filed suit against IBM) was to acquire rights to x86 device drivers, not to Unix. Sun acquired all the rights it needed to Unix in the early 90s, long before SCO had become the Death Star.
It may look bad to those with only retrospect, hostility to Sun and no history, but could equally well represent the last of a series of regular transactions to keep the rights to Solaris up to date. And I'm personally sure that the rights acquired were part of the plans for OpenSolaris
In fact if you read my blog posting announcing the retirement of SISSL you'll find that was in fact the intention all along.
Actually, Sun offers non-profit organisations free access to the test suites for certification via a 'scholarship', and Brazil's SOUJava user group organisation has recently incorporated as a non-profit explicitly to apply for such scholarships for the open source projects working on JVM and library implementations, so I'd say "probably will" rather than "probably never".