"What we need is a way to distribute a version of OpenOffice that we can count on not to encourage people to use any non-free programs. If the developers of OpenOffice want to maintain their version with this policy, that would be ideal. Until recently I assumed that they did maintain it this way, but it appears they don't: with the current policies, any release of OpenOffice might depend on a non-free program merely because that was the fastest way to implement something. (...) We need a policy decision by the OO developers." (Stallman)
So, yeah, big mistake by OO.org developers. It remains to be seen if they even understand the point of this policy.
Because, remember, Java does not run everywhere and the JVM is proprietary, and you can't ship it freely.
OK, reality check now people! Linux is a competitor to Sun. It competes with Solaris. Sun would not want RedHat (main Linux distro cited by Sun people as "the enemy") to have Java.
RedHat probably sees this and is probably behind Havoc Pennington's comments last week about why "Red Hat not shipping Mono is currently a can't rather than a won't. Making it worse, we are not able to spell out all the facts on why we can't."
Which means RedHat will make the technological mistake of investing too much in Java, in order to get at Solaris, along with Harmony project folks who in all naiveté believe in Sun "blessing" Java. All the while, Mono just sits there, waiting to be used more...
ML, which is a language for weenies, was used in the verification of C code for the Airbus A340 fly-by-wire system, which proves it has no use beyond Academia, and was never used in industrial applications. http://www.astree.ens.fr/
the people who know better currently have the highest modded posts on this forum
Yeah, it called bias, and demonstrates the statistical phenomenom that happens when/. is flooded with Java fanboys ready to defend Sun and attack Free Software philosophy.
I imagine the majority of coders are working to create a decent alternative because they want just that, not out of some need for a jihad against an evil enemy.
No, no Jihad...but a minimal set of garantees that Sun has consistently failed to deliver. Don't you know anything about the history of computers and operating systems?
Are you just being ignorant, or intellectually dishonest? Aren't you aware of the troubles the FreeBSD community has gone through?
Let me cite this from the URL you gave: The current release of the JDK and JRE available via the FreeBSD Foundation is 1.3.1 and These binaries are not intended for use with FreeBSD 5.X, due to a binary compatibility issue.
Like I said, there's no Java in the Libre *Nix arena. And, besides, The FreeBSD Foundation has negotiated a license with Sun Microsystems to distribute FreeBSD binaries. As you might be aware, this means it's not Free Software.
I think in the *nix arena, Java is more useful for application code because of the wide variety of OSes.
The point is, except for GNU/Linux, there is no Java in the Libre *Nix arena.
Reliance of Sun proprietary sofware is a pain in the ass for everybody who's not on a Microsoft/Linux/MacOS system. The point of libre software was freedom, and there is no freedom when, say FreeBSD, has to argue with Sun (a competitor in the server arena, by the way).
It's too bad that a new generation of Linux users forget that freedom is what Free Software is about, and are smug in their "just works" attitude. This hurts the community, and treads upon the history and the heritage.
I'm sorry to say, you're distorting facts. The problem with GIF was that Unisys had a patent for the LZW compression algorithm, an algorithm used by GIF. The fact that the GIF standard was open and public only caused trouble because GIF was widely deployed with patented algorithm. There was a patent, and no one knew about it. Pick up any not-so-old book on compression, and you will see LZW. See here for more info on the GIF controversy.
What Mono has is an ECMA standard. This is entirely different. What they do is a clean room implementation. So, anything people say about MS claiming patent rights on Mono is just FUD, and probably boils down to prior art and the open standard published in a widely-known standards body. Seems hard to hold up in court...This is why a standard by a overseer like ISO, ANSI or ECMA is so important. This is not your de-facto-standard-via-implementation phenomenom, like Perl, Python, etc. This is different: big players, industry, corporations, etc. And no libre software license to go with it.
OTOH, as someone said in another thread, what if another company buys Sun Microsystems? What happens to the dear JCP? It all goes down the drain, because there's no garantee.
So, to sum it up, Java is a liability to the libre software community.
On the surface. However, on the Common Language Runtime, there's huge difference. You're one of those people who haven't read anything substantial on Mono, and dismiss it quickly on wrong premises.
I have lost all faith in the slashdot moderation system. The parent post is not flamebait. It is just an opinion, well written and well stated.
Thank you. In fact, when I posted, I was expecting to be moderated as flamebait. What happens is a statistical phenomenom: the nature of the topic is such that it's bound to atract Java fans, or at least outnumber the other non-fan group. Therefore, I get modded down as flamebait. And just yesterday, I got mod points...
I really don't see a way out of this. Maybe mod points have to be assigned weights, take into account how often someone points, and on what number of topics (consider that the topics are already somewhat categorized by slashdot), considering if he/she is an all around good poster (because this would avoid all-around posters just to get more weight for their mod points). An all-around good poster would be considered/by this community/ someone who deserves more weight. So if he/she mods me as flamebait, that's different than Java fanboys flooding to this thread and modding me down as flamebait.
The great beauty of the linux desktop is that it, like all *x desktop windowing systems, is not standardised
Actually, this sucks. It's supposed to be a Unix-like system. But people write source code full of Linuxism. As a result, some stuff is hard to port to a BSD system (a much more reliable aproximation of Unix).
If what you're defending was such a great idea, people wouldn't have created stuff like the LSB.
Quit the Java dependency. Head towards open standards.
How long will it take for the open source community to understand that C# is not only "a Java replacement", but a better technology? How long till people start reading the docs behind C#'s design?
Let's get this clear: Mono is free software, Java is not!
My intent is not to troll, but simply point out that, in the long run IMHO we should stick to Mono. Sun had its chance. It's done too little, too late.
Why all this investment of time on something that doesn't even have a standard by a credible overseer, like ISO, ANSI or ECMA?
This is perpetuating the Java/Sun dependency. Kick the habit!
I guess a lot of people are missing the obvious: this probably falls within Sun's plans to position themselves selling servers for huge parallel-computing applications. This is the trend we're seing in the industry. A lot of applications *need* this, like Bioinformatics, Cryptography (i.e. "national security"), and High Energy Physics.
maybe even GNU Octave for those who rightly fear that proprietary software undermines freedom of research
There is also Scilab, from the French INRIA (*) (let's say it's sort of Caltech, MIT, but French - highly competent, they are - they make great croissant and cheese) and ENPC. It's Libre software (FAIF).
I've seen people use it for real research, and they thought it to be excellent. There aren't as many packages as Matlab, apparently (but this is something that depends on the number of power users, so it might change).
(*)INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE EN INFORMATIQUE ET EN AUTOMATIQUE
Then how do you explain Java being crappier feature-wise than pretty much every functional language?
My guess is that it's Gosling's fault, since he was the main designer AFAIK. IIRC, Steele was brought in late in the game - and I would guess - probably because they (Sun) screwed up so badly.
Furthermore, there has been a language that looks a great deal like (parts of) mathematics: APL. No one uses it, and part of the reason is that the statements are far too compact--i.e. "mathematics like"--to be readable.
APL has been superseded by J. IMHO, J will not catch on, not because of the syntax. In fact, APL and J syntax are a feature, not a bug. But J is proprietary, and has small mindshare. So, no, it won't catch on...This is a mistake some people still make...We're not in the 80s anymore. APL inventor Kenneth Iverson has passed away, but J has not been released into an open source form.
Mathematica historically has had a lot of bugs, AFAIK, because the way it was implemented was to write everything in C. Maple, OTOH, first implemented a small language (Maple), and everything else was written in Maple itself, thereby reducing the number of bugs. I'm not a user of Mathematica, one has to follow the tradition at their school, and at mine, people prefer Maple; but the few the integrations answers I saw (Calculus I class) had somewhat bizarre answers. Maple had answers that were equal to those done "by hand."
Indeed a search of the spec says "no attempt at backward compatibility/this is a new language with little relation to fortran"
You really seem to be one of those people who can't really tell the difference between programming languages.
How can you reconcile features like proper tail cails optimisation, first-class functions, and type inference with Fortran? These things are the very result of 20 years of programming language evolution that have been largely ignored by the non-functional programming communities. That is to say, unless you've been keeping up with the functional languages - which means you're a C/C++/Java/etc programmer -you don't understand that these are some of the features that now allow you to code as-a-human, instead of code as-a-machine. Not inherent to all of these features (e.g., Haskell's case), but not opposite to them, is the possibility of crafting compilers yielding optimized, near-C performance code. These are the lessons from SML, OCaml, Clean, and modern Common Lisp compilers.
If you've been sleeping for the past 20 years, Guy Steele hasn't.
Fortress development team, hopes that Fortress will to 'do for Fortran what Java did for C.' Steele admits that Java isn't probably the best choice for numerical computing
So they finally admit that what Java did was break the IEEE floating-point specification, that was correct in C, as Professor William Kahan, of Berkeley (see How JAVA's Floating-Point Hurts Everyone Everywhere), had been shouting to deaf ears all this time?
So? Enlighten me: what does that say about FP computations in Java, since you rely on a virtual machine? Have you read the paper? I guess not, huh? Oh, by the way, it's by an expert from Berkeley in Numerical Computing. Also, let me remind you that a correct implementation of FP in Java was/pulled out/ of the JCP. Have you read the follow ups? Probably not. Consistency in Java's VM? You've got to be kidding. Some do tail-recursions, some don't. Java is not so well-designed. It's a fact. If it were not so, why is it that people in the physics, applied mathemtatics, engineering and numerical computation community use C/C++ (and Fortran, of course) instead?
Slashdot Mirror
Bottom line: policy
"What we need is a way to distribute a version of OpenOffice that we can count on not to encourage people to use any non-free programs. If the developers of OpenOffice want to maintain their version with this policy, that would be ideal. Until recently I assumed that they did maintain it this way, but it appears they don't: with the current policies, any release of OpenOffice might depend on a non-free program merely because that was the fastest way to implement something. (...) We need a policy decision by the OO developers." (Stallman)
So, yeah, big mistake by OO.org developers. It remains to be seen if they even understand the point of this policy.
Because, remember, Java does not run everywhere and the JVM is proprietary, and you can't ship it freely.
OK, reality check now people! Linux is a competitor to Sun. It competes with Solaris. Sun would not want RedHat (main Linux distro cited by Sun people as "the enemy") to have Java.
RedHat probably sees this and is probably behind Havoc Pennington's comments last week about why "Red Hat not shipping Mono is currently a can't rather than a won't. Making it worse, we are not able to spell out all the facts on why we can't."
http://galaxy.osnews.com/email.php?blog_id=973
Which means RedHat will make the technological mistake of investing too much in Java, in order to get at Solaris, along with Harmony project folks who in all naiveté believe in Sun "blessing" Java. All the while, Mono just sits there, waiting to be used more...
ML, which is a language for weenies, was used in the verification of C code for the Airbus A340 fly-by-wire system, which proves it has no use beyond Academia, and was never used in industrial applications.
http://www.astree.ens.fr/
the people who know better currently have the highest modded posts on this forum
/. is flooded with Java fanboys ready to defend Sun and attack Free Software philosophy.
Yeah, it called bias, and demonstrates the statistical phenomenom that happens when
That's to build the canvas. How about the database?
Get a grip.
I imagine the majority of coders are working to create a decent alternative because they want just that, not out of some need for a jihad against an evil enemy.
No, no Jihad...but a minimal set of garantees that Sun has consistently failed to deliver.
Don't you know anything about the history of computers and operating systems?
Are you just being ignorant, or intellectually dishonest? Aren't you aware of the troubles the FreeBSD community has gone through?
Let me cite this from the URL you gave: The current release of the JDK and JRE available via the FreeBSD Foundation is 1.3.1 and These binaries are not intended for use with FreeBSD 5.X, due to a binary compatibility issue.
Like I said, there's no Java in the Libre *Nix arena. And, besides, The FreeBSD Foundation has negotiated a license with Sun Microsystems to distribute FreeBSD binaries. As you might be aware, this means it's not Free Software.
I think in the *nix arena, Java is more useful for application code because of the wide variety of OSes.
The point is, except for GNU/Linux, there is no Java in the Libre *Nix arena.
Reliance of Sun proprietary sofware is a pain in the ass for everybody who's not on a Microsoft/Linux/MacOS system. The point of libre software was freedom, and there is no freedom when, say FreeBSD, has to argue with Sun (a competitor in the server arena, by the way).
It's too bad that a new generation of Linux users forget that freedom is what Free Software is about, and are smug in their "just works" attitude. This hurts the community, and treads upon the history and the heritage.
Do you remember the GIF patent affair?
I'm sorry to say, you're distorting facts. The problem with GIF was that Unisys had a patent for the LZW compression algorithm, an algorithm used by GIF. The fact that the GIF standard was open and public only caused trouble because GIF was widely deployed with patented algorithm. There was a patent, and no one knew about it. Pick up any not-so-old book on compression, and you will see LZW. See here for more info on the GIF controversy.
What Mono has is an ECMA standard. This is entirely different. What they do is a clean room implementation. So, anything people say about MS claiming patent rights on Mono is just FUD, and probably boils down to prior art and the open standard published in a widely-known standards body. Seems hard to hold up in court...This is why a standard by a overseer like ISO, ANSI or ECMA is so important. This is not your de-facto-standard-via-implementation phenomenom, like Perl, Python, etc. This is different: big players, industry, corporations, etc. And no libre software license to go with it.
OTOH, as someone said in another thread, what if another company buys Sun Microsystems? What happens to the dear JCP? It all goes down the drain, because there's no garantee.
So, to sum it up, Java is a liability to the libre software community.
I meant C#. Sorry if I didn't express myself very well.
Mono is just Java with minor alterations.
On the surface. However, on the Common Language Runtime, there's huge difference. You're one of those people who haven't read anything substantial on Mono, and dismiss it quickly on wrong premises.
I have lost all faith in the slashdot moderation system. The parent post is not flamebait. It is just an opinion, well written and well stated.
/by this community/ someone who deserves more weight. So if he/she mods me as flamebait, that's different than Java fanboys flooding to this thread and modding me down as flamebait.
Thank you. In fact, when I posted, I was expecting to be moderated as flamebait. What happens is a statistical phenomenom: the nature of the topic is such that it's bound to atract Java fans, or at least outnumber the other non-fan group. Therefore, I get modded down as flamebait. And just yesterday, I got mod points...
I really don't see a way out of this. Maybe mod points have to be assigned weights, take into account how often someone points, and on what number of topics (consider that the topics are already somewhat categorized by slashdot), considering if he/she is an all around good poster (because this would avoid all-around posters just to get more weight for their mod points). An all-around good poster would be considered
My point being that if big shots like Apaches don't jump on this bandwagon, it'll take longer than necessary.
The great beauty of the linux desktop is that it, like all *x desktop windowing systems, is not standardised
Actually, this sucks. It's supposed to be a Unix-like system. But people write source code full of Linuxism. As a result, some stuff is hard to port to a BSD system (a much more reliable aproximation of Unix).
If what you're defending was such a great idea, people wouldn't have created stuff like the LSB.
Quit the Java dependency. Head towards open standards.
How long will it take for the open source community to understand that C# is not only "a Java replacement", but a better technology? How long till people start reading the docs behind C#'s design?
Let's get this clear: Mono is free software, Java is not!
My intent is not to troll, but simply point out that, in the long run IMHO we should stick to Mono. Sun had its chance. It's done too little, too late.
Why all this investment of time on something that doesn't even have a standard by a credible overseer, like ISO, ANSI or ECMA?
This is perpetuating the Java/Sun dependency. Kick the habit!
Mathematica is an interpreted language
Let's have a language war!
Maple has the algorithms from NAG for large matrix computations! (NAG = Numerical Algorithms Group).
I guess a lot of people are missing the obvious: this probably falls within Sun's plans to position themselves selling servers for huge parallel-computing applications. This is the trend we're seing in the industry. A lot of applications *need* this, like Bioinformatics, Cryptography (i.e. "national security"), and High Energy Physics.
Wasn't this paper co-authored with Joe Darcy .. now the Java floating point czar working on Tiger (Java 1.5)?
Yes...Funny how when he got hired by Sun his perspective on things changed, huh? All of a sudden, it ain't broken...
maybe even GNU Octave for those who rightly fear that proprietary software undermines freedom of research
There is also Scilab, from the French INRIA (*) (let's say it's sort of Caltech, MIT, but French - highly competent, they are - they make great croissant and cheese) and ENPC. It's Libre software (FAIF).
I've seen people use it for real research, and they thought it to be excellent. There aren't as many packages as Matlab, apparently (but this is something that depends on the number of power users, so it might change).
(*)INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE EN INFORMATIQUE ET EN AUTOMATIQUE
I thought Mathematica was the successor to Fortran
Seriously? You thought that? You thought that a symbolic algebra system is the same as a language designed for number-crunching optimizations?
Then how do you explain Java being crappier feature-wise than pretty much every functional language?
My guess is that it's Gosling's fault, since he was the main designer AFAIK. IIRC, Steele was brought in late in the game - and I would guess - probably because they (Sun) screwed up so badly.
Furthermore, there has been a language that looks a great deal like (parts of) mathematics: APL. No one uses it, and part of the reason is that the statements are far too compact--i.e. "mathematics like"--to be readable.
APL has been superseded by J. IMHO, J will not catch on, not because of the syntax. In fact, APL and J syntax are a feature, not a bug. But J is proprietary, and has small mindshare. So, no, it won't catch on...This is a mistake some people still make...We're not in the 80s anymore.
APL inventor Kenneth Iverson has passed away, but J has not been released into an open source form.
Mathematica historically has had a lot of bugs, AFAIK, because the way it was implemented was to write everything in C. Maple, OTOH, first implemented a small language (Maple), and everything else was written in Maple itself, thereby reducing the number of bugs.
I'm not a user of Mathematica, one has to follow the tradition at their school, and at mine, people prefer Maple; but the few the integrations answers I saw (Calculus I class) had somewhat bizarre answers. Maple had answers that were equal to those done "by hand."
Indeed a search of the spec says "no attempt at backward compatibility/this is a new language with little relation to fortran"
You really seem to be one of those people who can't really tell the difference between programming languages.
How can you reconcile features like proper tail cails optimisation, first-class functions, and type inference with Fortran? These things are the very result of 20 years of programming language evolution that have been largely ignored by the non-functional programming communities. That is to say, unless you've been keeping up with the functional languages - which means you're a C/C++/Java/etc programmer -you don't understand that these are some of the features that now allow you to code as-a-human, instead of code as-a-machine. Not inherent to all of these features (e.g., Haskell's case), but not opposite to them, is the possibility of crafting compilers yielding optimized, near-C performance code. These are the lessons from SML, OCaml, Clean, and modern Common Lisp compilers.
If you've been sleeping for the past 20 years, Guy Steele hasn't.
Fortress development team, hopes that Fortress will to 'do for Fortran what Java did for C.' Steele admits that Java isn't probably the best choice for numerical computing
So they finally admit that what Java did was break the IEEE floating-point specification, that was correct in C, as Professor William Kahan, of Berkeley (see How JAVA's Floating-Point Hurts Everyone Everywhere), had been shouting to deaf ears all this time?
So? Enlighten me: what does that say about FP computations in Java, since you rely on a virtual machine? Have you read the paper? I guess not, huh? Oh, by the way, it's by an expert from Berkeley in Numerical Computing. Also, let me remind you that a correct implementation of FP in Java was /pulled out/ of the JCP.
Have you read the follow ups? Probably not.
Consistency in Java's VM? You've got to be kidding. Some do tail-recursions, some don't.
Java is not so well-designed. It's a fact. If it were not so, why is it that people in the physics, applied mathemtatics, engineering and numerical computation community use C/C++ (and Fortran, of course) instead?