"*shrug* We agree, I think, just taking different approaches at it:)"
Yes... for the most part.:)
I'm not saying that with a busines the company will be more reliable, just that it has legal accountability to be more reliable.
As for not thinking that it is going to be that hard to review the code.... reviewing code you need to know a lot about programming. Someone to be competent as a good code auditor will need to be a good programmer as well. Anyone that's a good programmer would much rather be coding than auditing.:)
Just to clarify. I'm not saying open source is bad or not secure. I just don't understand that argument. That peice wasn't necessarily in reference to anything the article author said but a general comment that is on topic to linux/security/open source, and gets brought up a lot.
I'm not saying open source is bad I'm saying that I don't see that argument as being valid in terms of security.
but I'd like to comment on :
"Third is that if there's a problem with a particular piece of code (say, the SSL libraries) generally with open source you can contact the dev and get some cooperation without having a service contract or having to go thru lengthy procedures in dealing with a(nother) corporation."
Provided the developer hasn't lost interest in maintaining that code anymore, provide he still has time to work on it, provided he hasn't changed his email, provided he's not too busy working on the latest bit of tech that caught his interest now.
If you're paying for this type of service then you have an SLA specifying what type of support and the supported life of the product. You don't have to worry about the product no longer being supported. The provider is required by the contract (SLA) to offer you the type of support for the specified length of the product. It's something you can count on more.
Maybe a better argument you could have made is that in an OS project almost anyone can go in and offer a patch even if the original developer no longer supports the project. You're still relying on the general good of others to do the work and there is no legal entitlement for anyone to do the work for you.
Some of these open source projects have tons of people contributing code and it is one of the reason's that they have been able to progress so rapidly. It took 10's 100's 1000's of people to write the software, it'll take that many to review it in a timely manner.
I just don't think that argument about security is valid when a project becomes complex.
A lot of it comes down to trust. When you're talking about defence projects, you're talking about security as well as people's lives. You have to trust the people you're dealing with. They know company XXX isn't going to screw them by building a back door that might screw them and they know that all the employees working on the project have received the appropriate clearances (and had background checks). With open source, it's not as easy to build trust since almost anyone can go in and change the code and you don't know who they really are. Just imagine how ticked off someone will be if they accidentally set off an easter egg in the targetting software of their HUD.:)
I'm just saying that it's not FUD to say that the open source model isn't up to the stringest standards of the defense industry. It's just the truth. That doesn't make open source software bad, or this guy anti-oss.
There are much higher standards for security in these situations.
I know Sun had to have a special version of Solaris just to meet these needs and Solaris was already considered very secure to begin with. I can't remember if MS released a secure NT for this reason as well or if they tried to and failed.
Talking about the openess of the linux code, there's another question I always wonder nobody asks. Sure Linux is open source and that's what helps it get better but I don't see the argument in terms of cost and security. Saying "you have the source you can see how secure it is" doesn't work for me. People buy an OS because it's cheaper to spend a few hundred or a few grand per PC than it is to hire the staff to build their own OS. Having to have the staff that can review, maintain and patch their own linux kernel alone isn't easy. It's something like 1.5 million lines of code right now. People want an OS that just works and is cheaper than building one themselves.
"Sun spent a huge amount of money creating an alibi for McNealy when the company went down the toilet."
How is sun spending money to defend itself against Microsoft's misuse of Java that was in violation of their licensing creating an alibi for McNealy? Same goes for spending money and time in all the anti-trust cases against MS?
"Sun's situation had nothing to do with Microsoft, their market is eroding because of Linux and cheap commodity hardware. They would be in serious trouble even if Linux had never been written, the cost of an Intel box plus a traditional Unix license is much less than the cost of the competing Sun box. "
Actually, long before Linux was close to a viable alternative, NT was hurting Sun in the middle tier server area. Microsoft also made it harder for them to integrate their products and services with Microsoft's products and services. People were switch from Sun to intel boxes because they already had windows on the desktop and Microsoft was able to lock out other vendors and user that to their advantage in establishing a server OS.
If you look at the current pricing for sun hardware, the pricing isn't much different than comparable systems from commodity vendors. And by comparable I mean 64bit processor based systems. Sun offers some AMD boxes but their cheapest 1u server is under 1k and uses an ultrasparc processor and runs solaris. Sure, you can make a server for a few hundred bucks but it's not the same class in terms of a reliable and easy to upgrade (while still in production) architecture. A lot of people were going to lower end systems that weren't made by Sun. Not because Sun was too expensive, but because the offereings from Sun weren't aimed at this market. They are now offering products aimed for those markets and their prices are comparable. Sun started to realize this when they first came out with their Ultra line of workstations. Many people were using them as servers and not workstations. They were a little slow to get the message but they're strategy has changed a bit since then.
"Sun has been going 'upmarket' for the past ten years. Read Clayton Christiansen and 'The Innovator's Solution' to understand why that is a long term strategic disaster. The market for large servers was a temporary phenomena that was always going to end up being turned into a commodity. Ten years ago a workstation was essential if you were going to do serious academic research in the comp/sci field. Today an Intel or AMD box is 'good enough' for 98% of users. "
Is that why IBM still makes a ton of money of their mainframes and their sales are still rising? And why the majority of corporate data is still on a mainframe? This type of comment comes out a lot. It seems that many in the slashdot community only think in terms of small business and their one or two webservers that host their business and ignore the corporate market. Maybe it's just because running 41,500 virtual linux servers on one mainframe instead of 41,500 individual servers doesn't give you the opportunity to say "boxen" in alll your/. posts:)
It's also that TI kinda has been helping with delays in the unltrasparc line. Sun was falling behind. What the decided to do is drop the UltraSPARC V and concentrate more on their next version of processor. Their keeping their design teams on and I doubt they'll have them planting trees. So hopefully the next chip comes out stronger and faster.
5 Insightful. Do you know how much effort Sun put into all the US and EU anit trust cases?
When it comes to Microsoft, linux and the OSS talk a good game, but it's sun fighting the fight.
You think microsoft was going to find a way to kill linux before? Imagine how much easier it will be now without all of sun's money and time spent in the court system.
The OSS made a big mistake alienating Sun that is going to hurt them. The more and more I read the various OSS 'news' sources, the more I think that somoene, maybe IBM, has gotten the OSS community to take on their fight aginst. MS.
Every one applauds IBM for their fight against SCO, an annoyance, and ignores Sun for their fight against microsoft.
THIS IS what their customers want. Sun has always been criticized for not listening to their customers. Their customers want Sun to stop fighting MS and start working with them on better ingegration. So they put asside some of their principles and work things out with Microsoft. And now the OSS community criticizes them about it.
Let's see, customers on one hand, a bunch of ungrateful people on the other that no matter how much time and money you invest in them, how much software you give them, they just keep asking for more and more and trying to stab you in the bback whenever they can.
Wake up peaple, if it's such a big deal now that Sun isn't fighting microsoft, why didn't you make it a big deal when Sun WAS fighting microsoft tooth and nail. And in most cases winning.
Just as a side note. On the night of April 8th I submitted a story regarding the availability of Java Studio Creator. That never showed up but post something bad about Sun and it's there... even if an article on the same subject appeared yesterday.
The OSS community turned their back on Sun a long time ago. The MS deal is good for their clients.
It's cool to fight microsoft but not practical. Especially when you have a group of people trying to destroy your company by badmouthing you on the internet because they figure if they can't take on windows, they'll take on solaris.
Sad to think that all that money Sun invested on behalf of the OSS community only bought them animosity and a massive FUD campaign. I wouldn't' be surprised if IBM was behind it.
In the article, one of the merchants mentioned that some of the calls take 35-40 minutes and they get abour 3-4 a day. That comes out to about 8-9 hours a week of time wasted.
It's reprehensible that these scammers would use this technology. You can't blame the businesses for not wasting their time on these calls.
Right now if I look at my email box I've won thousands of dollars worth of stuff including an ipod, a sony camcorder and a converible and have maybe 3/4's of a million dollars in pre approved credit. And that's just since the last time I deleted the spam and the stuff not caught before that.
One day, I may actually win a car or something and I'll probably just delete the message without reading it.
My point is you can't blame legitimate business people from being smart in accounting for their time becuase one in 100 or 200 or 300 or 1000 of those calls might be legit. It's not fair to the deaf and it's not fair to the businesses. It's the scammers that are causing the problems for both of them.
Consider this. 4-5 times a day you get pulled out of your store to help someone in a wheelchair up the stairs and in and out. They look around but you don't really have what they want. Every time you roll them out your jaw drops as they stand up and walk away.
I forget the streets but there were a few of them. One in philadelphia near the drexel campus area. There are signs with those 7bar numbers that tell you the best speed to go on that street to avoid all the red lights. The speed was generally at or below the speed limit.
I think that's a better plan. I don't know how effective it was in general but I always tried to go by the sign when on that route and it seemed to work out well.
My ass... all this time the linux community is waiting for sun to come up with a linux strategy. They finally do. They have sun desktops that they are marketting heavily. They are also selling opteron based rack servers that run either solaris or linux.
This is what linux needs. More support from big respected companies. No offense, but even with their recent linux dabblings and new products Novell doesn't have anywhere near there respect that Sun has in terms of internet application platforms.
Sun starting to distribute linux is a good thing.
Maybe one day people will realize it and stop trying to kill Sun. For all they've done for OSS and are doing for Linux people should support them.
Sun's stance seems to be Sun servers where high availability and reliability is necessary and where you need big iron horse power. For lower end servers they have their amd line (as well as some 1u sparc based servers) The amd can run solaris x86 or linux. On the desktop if you need thin clients they have their sunblade stuff... if you need a big heavy workstation they also have those, if you want a good linux based workstation they have that too.
This is a sound strategy that most should agree with.
Yeah sorry. The main site I post stuff too doesn't have HTML formatted as the default and I had just finished posting there and forgot to change the options. My appologies.
"Software has become a commodity. You understand the term, yes? The OS, the Office Suite, the web server, the database, the user applications... they are no longer products with inherent commercial value. They have become tools for delivering more sophisticated services."
Oh you mean like a hammer? A hammer is just a commodity item to build a house. So is lumber for that matter. Last time I checked HomeDepot wasn't giving those away.
The OSS community builds tools that make building sophisticated applications easy. Then they give them away. Then they wonder why all the programming jobs are going overseas where people use these free tools they built to do their work.
This whole issue of "commodity software" seems weak to me.
I can see why IBM is pushing the concept of commodity software. IBM sells services and hardware. The only software they sell is in support of their services or hardware. You can't run software without hardware. You can't sell good services without software. IBM win's big.
Last time I checked the OSS community didn't make hardware.
I really don't get it.
You don't have to look far to see how many millions of dollars Sun has invested in open source companies. You don't have to strain to find different open source projects they've released at much cost.
IBM invests 50 million in Novell, a company that many people thought was going to die a long time ago. IBM buys support and licensing for Java from Sun. IBM hates Sun and wants them to open source Java so that they don't have to give money to one of their competitors.
Sun makes a real reliable unix platform and starts off saying that Solaris is better than Linux for most applications. Newsflash.... their right. Some OSS users thing because so many people are building these little websites on OSS software that it's good enough for something that takes a real pounding and handles real money. It's getting there... but it's not there yet and as Linux makes improvements in their code base so do commercial versions.
Sun fights Microsoft tooth and nail for many years. Spending more money. Fighting for principles that would help not only sun but other software companies. They were a big part of every antitrust case involving microsoft. They no doubt have spent a lot of money in these cases.
Where is Sun getting all this money? Sun does it's own R&D and they spend a lot on it. They come out with products that work well and are reliable. They offer good support. They are the source of a lot of innovation. As the company has grown they realized they couldn't come up with everything now that they were playing in a much larger arena so they started acquring technology as well. Sun and Oracle in my view are two computer companies that have really built themselves. Even Apple, which people like to point to as the new Unix, wouldn't be around today if it wasn't for $150million fro Microsoft.
Why is Sun now in bed with Microsoft? I can think of a few reasons. Number one, you can't get market penetration unless you can interoperate with Microsoft systems. The people that buy Sun servers are probably not linux shops. They run a good deal of MS products. They have to work together to some degree. Sun has been working hard on different technology on their own to do this but MS got in their way. Sun's customers (you know... people that give sun money) wanted better interoperability. They will now get it.
Who is ticked off? The OSS community. Because they see this as strengthening microsoft and a threat to Linux. Where was the OSS communities support for sun when they were fighting MS? Where was support for Sun when they were opening all these different projects?
The OSS community just seems so selfish and fickle at times. Give us something "yay!" Two weeks later... "What are you going to give us?" Gimme Java, Gimme solaris, gimme staroffice (as opposed to oo.o) Gimme, gimme gimme gimme,.
Why? A lot of it seems to have to do with McNealy calling Linux a toy operating system, back in the day when it WAS a toy operating system. Before millions of dollars was spent by big companies to make linux better.
More reasons? Sure... the OSS community is on IBM's cock over their commitment to linux and it seems IBM is using the open source community to help kill off one of it's biggest competitors.
Sun used to be the company with the most microsoft-free cash. IBM comes nowhere close with their tight aliances and new partnerships. If there was ever a company that the OSS community should have rallied around I would have thought it would haee been sun. With no support... I take that back... with all this backstabbing from it's friends... it's no surprise that Sun would wind up settling their case.
If OSS and Sun could have managed to get things together and work out a plan earlier for linux to be on the desktop and a sun and linux server mix in the datacenter it would have been a killer combination.
Sun has been criticized as being a fair weather friend to OSS but if you look at the facts, you see that Sun has been a much better friend to a group that wishes it's demise.
Unix identiservers are based on LDAP which is an open standard. Active Directory is not. Sun's identity server will now be able to work with AD. I don't know if that means that they will be able to mak all LDAP servers work with AD but Sun's will. Yeah this may not benefit all of open source but now there is going to be a unix identity server that interfaces with AD.
It's not Sun giving to make AD better, seems more like Microsoft giving to make Sun's Identity Server better by making it able to talk to AD.
Microsoft sharing it's IP. Maybe an arbitrator finaly realized what you have to do with a monopoly?
.mail tld? You got to be kidding me!?!?! Not only will it not work but why give a stupd TLD when there are more important ones for things people really care about.
Why can't they make important ones like.bg,.gg,.mfm,.ffm,.fist,.bound,.gaged,.pets? I mean why do only TransVestites get to have their own TLD?
"Joy, I can illegally distribute it in a form modified from what Sun provided!"
Not quite, Sun outlines what optional JRE files may be removed and still legally distributed. You may also legally include some parts of the JDK.
"Joy, now my 100k Tetris-clone can be 5,100k !" "Joy, I can just completely forget about running "applets"!"
So then if it bothers you that much, push sun to work on licensing with your favorite distro. This is more likely than open sourcing Java. It's also all you really need for the majority of users that have issues.
What did nobody port any compression utilitities to your platform? You can also strip it down a bit. Read something somewhere that they got it down to under 5megs with the new compression but that has it's own problems.
Also, I have tested some installers that will go out and grab a jre if not present. It's a pain but it's something you only have to do once.
Many people also offer their apps in different versions. With or without windows jre for different platforms.
Most windows installs have/will have a jre.
I think the OSS community shouldn't take no as the end of the story. It seems OSS want's java. There should be for better binary licensing first. Let's see how that goes. If the OSS community shows Sun that making Java more available to them benefits them, then discussions about open sourcing Java might be better accepted.
It's really dissapointing when people think like you. Sun has a lot of open source projects. Not just OO.org. To say they are lukwar to OSS is just ignorant.
While the Java Desktop System may seem out of place and eveen offend some people consider that Java does have a respected name in the enterprise and companies do hold back on linux because of the lawsuits (no matter how baseless).
The didn't kill off the cobalt servers. Changes in the way people got online did. They open sourced what was on there if I remember correctly.
They're putting a lot of effort into their linux distro and getting it out there in a big way for not a lot of money. What has the open source community done for sun? I'm really curious if there is anything.
"Sun won't pay for a client (read desktop) implementation."
There are to JVM's the client VM and the server JVM. You can run either one on the desktop or server. In fact a lot of people run the server VM for desktop apps because, although it uses about 10% mmore memory, it is a lot faster.
Sun and the JCP Come out with this great new way of doing something and implementing it in Java.
Microsoft or anyone else wants to implement the same functionality that has now become widely accepted and expected.
Microsoft downloads the source from sourceforge, capitalizes a few letters and puts it in the.NET framework.
Why is that bad? Because people can't innovate if they starve to death. Let them be able to support themselves through their innovation rather than spending time on the phone trying to help someone install their product.
I get the impression a lot of you don't know what's going on with Java and how useful it is. You should look around different open source java projects. You'd be quite impressed. There are also distro's that come with Java. They just paid for them. Is RedHat selling their linux distro for so much because they have to make up for their sun license costs or because they can make more money because they offer a more complete product that meets the needs of many web developers?
There's a bit of a learning curve, as there is with everything. But imagine... How much the OSS world would benefit if teams spent lest time porting to different platforms? If people never said "I'd love to be a part of this project but I don't know how to program in xYZ"?
On the client side, Java/Swing apps might not be faster than native applications, but they're nowhere near as bad as they were before. Don't judge java performance based on those stupid rollover applets people put on their web pages that crash your browser.
"Interesting. And yet Sun tried (and was successful for a little while) to force MS to include the JRE with every copy of windows.
What was going to be the "significant and primary functionality" that was to go along with it?"
Seriously, where do you people get your information from? MS licensed the right to distribute Java technology plus some other stuff. Then they violated the licensing agreements by bastardizing their jvm so that most people that developed java apps on windows wound up with non portable code. So they sued MS and they won 20M.
Part of the deal was that Windows could no longer license java. But that doesn't mean that PC's won't come with a JRE. It just means that MS won't be putting them on there. Sun is working with people like Dell, HP, IBM to include the Sun JRE and plug in in the base system.
Apple already includes Java and have contributed back some neat features that will be realeased in 1.5.
All these linux people wanted to bring down MS as the top desktop os. This was not going to happen so all the fud comes out about sun and solaris and java because replacing unix is at least more feasable than replacing windows. IBM wants sun to look bad because sun's been leading in the midrange unix market and their high end servers have been eating into IBM's mainframe sales.
The internet's economy isn't built on a whole bunch of 486dx2 debian boxes on someone's cable modem.
"Last time I checked the JRE license file (and the readme.txt), it was permissible to redistribute JRE as a part of your product without paying any royalties"
If by product you mean your OS that you built no. If you mean a java application yes.
Sun grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license without fees to reproduce and distribute the Software, provided that (i) you distribute the Software complete and unmodified (unless otherwise specified in the applicable README file) and only bundled as part of, and for the sole purpose of running, your Programs, (ii) the Programs add significant and primary functionality to the Software, (iii) you do not distribute additional software intended to replace any component(s) of the Software (unless otherwise specified in the applicable README file),
The point is you can distribute it with your application provided your application needs it to run and does something useful. You can't create a "Hello World" application and use that to justify installing distributing the JRE in your OS.
In addition you can omit some files that are marked optional to decrease the size of the jre part of your distribution. You can also include certain parts of the JSDK including the server VM and the java compiler (javac) The latter is good if you'd like to distribute your application in open source form and provide a tool for users to compile it if they've made changes.
There is a new compression feature in 1.5 that will be able to compress the JRE into a really small file. Though the 1.5 JRE looks like it's going to be a lot bigger than 1.4.2. I don't do much client side development so I've never had to worry about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes... for the most part. :)
I'm not saying that with a busines the company will be more reliable, just that it has legal accountability to be more reliable.
As for not thinking that it is going to be that hard to review the code.... reviewing code you need to know a lot about programming. Someone to be competent as a good code auditor will need to be a good programmer as well. Anyone that's a good programmer would much rather be coding than auditing. :)
I'm not saying open source is bad I'm saying that I don't see that argument as being valid in terms of security.
but I'd like to comment on :
"Third is that if there's a problem with a particular piece of code (say, the SSL libraries) generally with open source you can contact the dev and get some cooperation without having a service contract or having to go thru lengthy procedures in dealing with a(nother) corporation."
Provided the developer hasn't lost interest in maintaining that code anymore, provide he still has time to work on it, provided he hasn't changed his email, provided he's not too busy working on the latest bit of tech that caught his interest now.
If you're paying for this type of service then you have an SLA specifying what type of support and the supported life of the product. You don't have to worry about the product no longer being supported. The provider is required by the contract (SLA) to offer you the type of support for the specified length of the product. It's something you can count on more.
Maybe a better argument you could have made is that in an OS project almost anyone can go in and offer a patch even if the original developer no longer supports the project. You're still relying on the general good of others to do the work and there is no legal entitlement for anyone to do the work for you.
Some of these open source projects have tons of people contributing code and it is one of the reason's that they have been able to progress so rapidly. It took 10's 100's 1000's of people to write the software, it'll take that many to review it in a timely manner.
I just don't think that argument about security is valid when a project becomes complex.
A lot of it comes down to trust. When you're talking about defence projects, you're talking about security as well as people's lives. You have to trust the people you're dealing with. They know company XXX isn't going to screw them by building a back door that might screw them and they know that all the employees working on the project have received the appropriate clearances (and had background checks). With open source, it's not as easy to build trust since almost anyone can go in and change the code and you don't know who they really are. Just imagine how ticked off someone will be if they accidentally set off an easter egg in the targetting software of their HUD. :)
I'm just saying that it's not FUD to say that the open source model isn't up to the stringest standards of the defense industry. It's just the truth. That doesn't make open source software bad, or this guy anti-oss.
I know Sun had to have a special version of Solaris just to meet these needs and Solaris was already considered very secure to begin with. I can't remember if MS released a secure NT for this reason as well or if they tried to and failed.
Talking about the openess of the linux code, there's another question I always wonder nobody asks. Sure Linux is open source and that's what helps it get better but I don't see the argument in terms of cost and security. Saying "you have the source you can see how secure it is" doesn't work for me. People buy an OS because it's cheaper to spend a few hundred or a few grand per PC than it is to hire the staff to build their own OS. Having to have the staff that can review, maintain and patch their own linux kernel alone isn't easy. It's something like 1.5 million lines of code right now. People want an OS that just works and is cheaper than building one themselves.
How is sun spending money to defend itself against Microsoft's misuse of Java that was in violation of their licensing creating an alibi for McNealy? Same goes for spending money and time in all the anti-trust cases against MS?
"Sun's situation had nothing to do with Microsoft, their market is eroding because of Linux and cheap commodity hardware. They would be in serious trouble even if Linux had never been written, the cost of an Intel box plus a traditional Unix license is much less than the cost of the competing Sun box. "
Actually, long before Linux was close to a viable alternative, NT was hurting Sun in the middle tier server area. Microsoft also made it harder for them to integrate their products and services with Microsoft's products and services. People were switch from Sun to intel boxes because they already had windows on the desktop and Microsoft was able to lock out other vendors and user that to their advantage in establishing a server OS.
If you look at the current pricing for sun hardware, the pricing isn't much different than comparable systems from commodity vendors. And by comparable I mean 64bit processor based systems. Sun offers some AMD boxes but their cheapest 1u server is under 1k and uses an ultrasparc processor and runs solaris. Sure, you can make a server for a few hundred bucks but it's not the same class in terms of a reliable and easy to upgrade (while still in production) architecture. A lot of people were going to lower end systems that weren't made by Sun. Not because Sun was too expensive, but because the offereings from Sun weren't aimed at this market. They are now offering products aimed for those markets and their prices are comparable. Sun started to realize this when they first came out with their Ultra line of workstations. Many people were using them as servers and not workstations. They were a little slow to get the message but they're strategy has changed a bit since then.
"Sun has been going 'upmarket' for the past ten years. Read Clayton Christiansen and 'The Innovator's Solution' to understand why that is a long term strategic disaster. The market for large servers was a temporary phenomena that was always going to end up being turned into a commodity. Ten years ago a workstation was essential if you were going to do serious academic research in the comp/sci field. Today an Intel or AMD box is 'good enough' for 98% of users. "
Is that why IBM still makes a ton of money of their mainframes and their sales are still rising? And why the majority of corporate data is still on a mainframe? This type of comment comes out a lot. It seems that many in the slashdot community only think in terms of small business and their one or two webservers that host their business and ignore the corporate market. Maybe it's just because running 41,500 virtual linux servers on one mainframe instead of 41,500 individual servers doesn't give you the opportunity to say "boxen" in alll your /. posts :)
It's also that TI kinda has been helping with delays in the unltrasparc line. Sun was falling behind. What the decided to do is drop the UltraSPARC V and concentrate more on their next version of processor. Their keeping their design teams on and I doubt they'll have them planting trees. So hopefully the next chip comes out stronger and faster.
When it comes to Microsoft, linux and the OSS talk a good game, but it's sun fighting the fight.
You think microsoft was going to find a way to kill linux before? Imagine how much easier it will be now without all of sun's money and time spent in the court system.
The OSS made a big mistake alienating Sun that is going to hurt them. The more and more I read the various OSS 'news' sources, the more I think that somoene, maybe IBM, has gotten the OSS community to take on their fight aginst. MS.
Every one applauds IBM for their fight against SCO, an annoyance, and ignores Sun for their fight against microsoft.
THIS IS what their customers want. Sun has always been criticized for not listening to their customers. Their customers want Sun to stop fighting MS and start working with them on better ingegration. So they put asside some of their principles and work things out with Microsoft. And now the OSS community criticizes them about it.
Let's see, customers on one hand, a bunch of ungrateful people on the other that no matter how much time and money you invest in them, how much software you give them, they just keep asking for more and more and trying to stab you in the bback whenever they can.
Wake up peaple, if it's such a big deal now that Sun isn't fighting microsoft, why didn't you make it a big deal when Sun WAS fighting microsoft tooth and nail. And in most cases winning.
Just as a side note. On the night of April 8th I submitted a story regarding the availability of Java Studio Creator. That never showed up but post something bad about Sun and it's there... even if an article on the same subject appeared yesterday.
It's cool to fight microsoft but not practical. Especially when you have a group of people trying to destroy your company by badmouthing you on the internet because they figure if they can't take on windows, they'll take on solaris.
Sad to think that all that money Sun invested on behalf of the OSS community only bought them animosity and a massive FUD campaign. I wouldn't' be surprised if IBM was behind it.
It's reprehensible that these scammers would use this technology. You can't blame the businesses for not wasting their time on these calls.
Right now if I look at my email box I've won thousands of dollars worth of stuff including an ipod, a sony camcorder and a converible and have maybe 3/4's of a million dollars in pre approved credit. And that's just since the last time I deleted the spam and the stuff not caught before that.
One day, I may actually win a car or something and I'll probably just delete the message without reading it.
My point is you can't blame legitimate business people from being smart in accounting for their time becuase one in 100 or 200 or 300 or 1000 of those calls might be legit. It's not fair to the deaf and it's not fair to the businesses. It's the scammers that are causing the problems for both of them.
You'd probably stop it after a while too.
I think that's a better plan. I don't know how effective it was in general but I always tried to go by the sign when on that route and it seemed to work out well.
Really? Apple doesn't seem to be doing that bad after the $150million it got from MS. $2billion should be pretty good.
More importantly, sun and ms will now have better integration. MS and Linux integration will probably get worse.
This is what linux needs. More support from big respected companies. No offense, but even with their recent linux dabblings and new products Novell doesn't have anywhere near there respect that Sun has in terms of internet application platforms.
Sun starting to distribute linux is a good thing.
Maybe one day people will realize it and stop trying to kill Sun. For all they've done for OSS and are doing for Linux people should support them.
Sun's stance seems to be Sun servers where high availability and reliability is necessary and where you need big iron horse power. For lower end servers they have their amd line (as well as some 1u sparc based servers) The amd can run solaris x86 or linux. On the desktop if you need thin clients they have their sunblade stuff... if you need a big heavy workstation they also have those, if you want a good linux based workstation they have that too.
This is a sound strategy that most should agree with.
Yeah sorry. The main site I post stuff too doesn't have HTML formatted as the default and I had just finished posting there and forgot to change the options. My appologies.
Oh you mean like a hammer? A hammer is just a commodity item to build a house. So is lumber for that matter. Last time I checked HomeDepot wasn't giving those away.
The OSS community builds tools that make building sophisticated applications easy. Then they give them away. Then they wonder why all the programming jobs are going overseas where people use these free tools they built to do their work.
This whole issue of "commodity software" seems weak to me.
I can see why IBM is pushing the concept of commodity software. IBM sells services and hardware. The only software they sell is in support of their services or hardware. You can't run software without hardware. You can't sell good services without software. IBM win's big.
Last time I checked the OSS community didn't make hardware.
I really don't get it. You don't have to look far to see how many millions of dollars Sun has invested in open source companies. You don't have to strain to find different open source projects they've released at much cost. IBM invests 50 million in Novell, a company that many people thought was going to die a long time ago. IBM buys support and licensing for Java from Sun. IBM hates Sun and wants them to open source Java so that they don't have to give money to one of their competitors. Sun makes a real reliable unix platform and starts off saying that Solaris is better than Linux for most applications. Newsflash.... their right. Some OSS users thing because so many people are building these little websites on OSS software that it's good enough for something that takes a real pounding and handles real money. It's getting there... but it's not there yet and as Linux makes improvements in their code base so do commercial versions. Sun fights Microsoft tooth and nail for many years. Spending more money. Fighting for principles that would help not only sun but other software companies. They were a big part of every antitrust case involving microsoft. They no doubt have spent a lot of money in these cases. Where is Sun getting all this money? Sun does it's own R&D and they spend a lot on it. They come out with products that work well and are reliable. They offer good support. They are the source of a lot of innovation. As the company has grown they realized they couldn't come up with everything now that they were playing in a much larger arena so they started acquring technology as well. Sun and Oracle in my view are two computer companies that have really built themselves. Even Apple, which people like to point to as the new Unix, wouldn't be around today if it wasn't for $150million fro Microsoft. Why is Sun now in bed with Microsoft? I can think of a few reasons. Number one, you can't get market penetration unless you can interoperate with Microsoft systems. The people that buy Sun servers are probably not linux shops. They run a good deal of MS products. They have to work together to some degree. Sun has been working hard on different technology on their own to do this but MS got in their way. Sun's customers (you know... people that give sun money) wanted better interoperability. They will now get it. Who is ticked off? The OSS community. Because they see this as strengthening microsoft and a threat to Linux. Where was the OSS communities support for sun when they were fighting MS? Where was support for Sun when they were opening all these different projects? The OSS community just seems so selfish and fickle at times. Give us something "yay!" Two weeks later... "What are you going to give us?" Gimme Java, Gimme solaris, gimme staroffice (as opposed to oo.o) Gimme, gimme gimme gimme,. Why? A lot of it seems to have to do with McNealy calling Linux a toy operating system, back in the day when it WAS a toy operating system. Before millions of dollars was spent by big companies to make linux better. More reasons? Sure... the OSS community is on IBM's cock over their commitment to linux and it seems IBM is using the open source community to help kill off one of it's biggest competitors. Sun used to be the company with the most microsoft-free cash. IBM comes nowhere close with their tight aliances and new partnerships. If there was ever a company that the OSS community should have rallied around I would have thought it would haee been sun. With no support... I take that back... with all this backstabbing from it's friends... it's no surprise that Sun would wind up settling their case. If OSS and Sun could have managed to get things together and work out a plan earlier for linux to be on the desktop and a sun and linux server mix in the datacenter it would have been a killer combination. Sun has been criticized as being a fair weather friend to OSS but if you look at the facts, you see that Sun has been a much better friend to a group that wishes it's demise.
Unix identiservers are based on LDAP which is an open standard. Active Directory is not. Sun's identity server will now be able to work with AD. I don't know if that means that they will be able to mak all LDAP servers work with AD but Sun's will. Yeah this may not benefit all of open source but now there is going to be a unix identity server that interfaces with AD. It's not Sun giving to make AD better, seems more like Microsoft giving to make Sun's Identity Server better by making it able to talk to AD. Microsoft sharing it's IP. Maybe an arbitrator finaly realized what you have to do with a monopoly?
Why can't they make important ones like .bg, .gg, .mfm, .ffm, .fist, .bound, .gaged, .pets? I mean why do only TransVestites get to have their own TLD?
Not quite, Sun outlines what optional JRE files may be removed and still legally distributed. You may also legally include some parts of the JDK.
"Joy, now my 100k Tetris-clone can be 5,100k !"
"Joy, I can just completely forget about running "applets"!"
So then if it bothers you that much, push sun to work on licensing with your favorite distro. This is more likely than open sourcing Java. It's also all you really need for the majority of users that have issues.
Also, I have tested some installers that will go out and grab a jre if not present. It's a pain but it's something you only have to do once.
Many people also offer their apps in different versions. With or without windows jre for different platforms.
Most windows installs have/will have a jre.
I think the OSS community shouldn't take no as the end of the story. It seems OSS want's java. There should be for better binary licensing first. Let's see how that goes. If the OSS community shows Sun that making Java more available to them benefits them, then discussions about open sourcing Java might be better accepted.
While the Java Desktop System may seem out of place and eveen offend some people consider that Java does have a respected name in the enterprise and companies do hold back on linux because of the lawsuits (no matter how baseless).
The didn't kill off the cobalt servers. Changes in the way people got online did. They open sourced what was on there if I remember correctly.
They're putting a lot of effort into their linux distro and getting it out there in a big way for not a lot of money. What has the open source community done for sun? I'm really curious if there is anything.
There are to JVM's the client VM and the server JVM. You can run either one on the desktop or server. In fact a lot of people run the server VM for desktop apps because, although it uses about 10% mmore memory, it is a lot faster.
- Sun and the JCP Come out with this great new way of doing something and implementing it in Java.
- Microsoft or anyone else wants to implement the same functionality that has now become widely accepted and expected.
- Microsoft downloads the source from sourceforge, capitalizes a few letters and puts it in the
.NET framework.
Why is that bad? Because people can't innovate if they starve to death. Let them be able to support themselves through their innovation rather than spending time on the phone trying to help someone install their product.I get the impression a lot of you don't know what's going on with Java and how useful it is. You should look around different open source java projects. You'd be quite impressed. There are also distro's that come with Java. They just paid for them. Is RedHat selling their linux distro for so much because they have to make up for their sun license costs or because they can make more money because they offer a more complete product that meets the needs of many web developers?
There's a bit of a learning curve, as there is with everything. But imagine... How much the OSS world would benefit if teams spent lest time porting to different platforms? If people never said "I'd love to be a part of this project but I don't know how to program in xYZ"?
On the client side, Java/Swing apps might not be faster than native applications, but they're nowhere near as bad as they were before. Don't judge java performance based on those stupid rollover applets people put on their web pages that crash your browser.
Seriously, where do you people get your information from? MS licensed the right to distribute Java technology plus some other stuff. Then they violated the licensing agreements by bastardizing their jvm so that most people that developed java apps on windows wound up with non portable code. So they sued MS and they won 20M.
Part of the deal was that Windows could no longer license java. But that doesn't mean that PC's won't come with a JRE. It just means that MS won't be putting them on there. Sun is working with people like Dell, HP, IBM to include the Sun JRE and plug in in the base system.
Apple already includes Java and have contributed back some neat features that will be realeased in 1.5.
All these linux people wanted to bring down MS as the top desktop os. This was not going to happen so all the fud comes out about sun and solaris and java because replacing unix is at least more feasable than replacing windows. IBM wants sun to look bad because sun's been leading in the midrange unix market and their high end servers have been eating into IBM's mainframe sales.
The internet's economy isn't built on a whole bunch of 486dx2 debian boxes on someone's cable modem.
If by product you mean your OS that you built no. If you mean a java application yes.
The point is you can distribute it with your application provided your application needs it to run and does something useful. You can't create a "Hello World" application and use that to justify installing distributing the JRE in your OS.In addition you can omit some files that are marked optional to decrease the size of the jre part of your distribution. You can also include certain parts of the JSDK including the server VM and the java compiler (javac) The latter is good if you'd like to distribute your application in open source form and provide a tool for users to compile it if they've made changes.
You can see the full JRE license here
There is a new compression feature in 1.5 that will be able to compress the JRE into a really small file. Though the 1.5 JRE looks like it's going to be a lot bigger than 1.4.2. I don't do much client side development so I've never had to worry about it.