If seperate applications are less than free, ok, but infrastructural software should be.
Why? Who made this decision? That's almost like saying all hammers should be free. If hammers were free we'd have people running around building homes because they have their new tool and we wouldn't have to worry about the homeless any more as a result. There's no value in the hammer, only in what you can do with it. Don't worry about making 12.99 for your hammer, show people how great a bench you can build with that hammer and make your money that way. I make benches. I would love to use a hammer to help me make my benches but I can't until it's free. And you could make hammers free if you made benches, or bird houses or the like. We, the community that wants you to release your hammer to the world can make quite some good money doing what we do... but for some reason, we can't seem to be able to buy a hammer.
The infrastructure takes time and money to develop, why shouldn't the person putting in that time and money be compensated for it in some way? It's not YOU that's paying for it in most cases, it's the people that need to get their applications certified java compliant such as VM creators.
Right now, there aren't many organizations that can really look over the development of Java other than Sun and in some respects IBM (thought they do some funky stuff and I don't know how comfy I'd feel about someone that had their own anti trust problems years back looking over something as important as Java). So chances are Sun will be a big player if Java gets open sourced. Probably serving a similar role as Linus servers for the Linux kernel.
The way Java is developed now really levels the playing field. First there's a specification, and the team that comes up with that specification is required to create a free reference implementation that may or may not include the source code. In addtion, they must come up with a testing suite so that others who develop to that spec can verify if they've conformed to it. I can't remember now if it's in all cases the test suite is free or that it can be free. Sun even puts a big chunk of money aside for compatability testing support for non profits and educational entities. Actually Sun's been pretty good with licensing recently on the non-prof and ed side lately.
You open source it, people start developing the stuff they want, they don't start with a specification, the're will be a lot of duplicate work and a lot of stupid work.
We're not talking about a few tens of thousands of people here that use this language like maybe some of the other open source languages. We're talkinga bout many developers worldwide, billions of dollars invested by the corporate world in implementing Java solutions. Open sourcing Java can have some very bad effects.
First of all... We ALL know what's going to happen once it gets open sourced. The OSS community will start working on it. They'll come to the conclusion that what's currently there is the biggest steaming pile of crap they've seen so they'll start rewriting it. 2 years later we'll finally be back up to compatibility with Java 1.2 and J2EE-ish.:)
Come to think of it. What's the deal with cables? Cables are absolutely the wrong way to go. I see cables having their purpose though but not how they intend.
You'd need a very fast way to defy gravity and climb that cable. I say screw the cable. We need bungee cords. it's going to increase the speed at which we can get objects into outer space. Not to mention the revenues stream from all those GenX Addrenalin junkie millionaires out there that would want a ride.
I just wonder if they'll be putting in one of those security cams so that security gaurds can keep themselves entertained watching couples fool around on the over night shift.
"There's also nothing preventing Sun from deprecating half the API on a whim.. in fact, they do that all the damn time."
That's just silly. First of all. Claiming sun deprecates API on a whim is false. Especially now with the JCP. What I have personally seen are api's deprecated when they were implemented initially in a way that didn't make sense. Hindsight is always 20/20. And when they do deprecate something. It's there for quite some time so that it doesn't kill your existing code until you get a chance to make changes. If you let people make changes they think don't are great but the Java community doesn't, they might fork their changes. Also what is the guarantee the OSS community won't one day decide. "Eh, we're tired of this Java thing." and stop supporting it? You don't have to search long to find examples of projects being abbandoned on sourceforge. The point is you don't like Sun having control and feel better when the OSS community has more of that control. The problem is that while OSS is making inroads, it is because people can get it for free or really cheap. Not because there is a team of global developers working on it. There are surveys all over the place that confirm this. Sun has credibility, Java has credibility, stop trying to pretend they don't or trying to tarnish their reputations.
Mozilla...
Still... Where would mozilla be without Netscape? And what happened to the benefits for Netscape? Show me how OSS saved Netscape rather than got a hold of it's code and ran with it.
KOffice and Gnome Office, to name two, have surpassed OpenOffice in usability and speed and have long surpassed the funcionality of StarOffice 5.x
Ok, back in the slashbox we go. This contradicts what users seem to be saying even in kde-forum. Didn't StarOffice 5.0 come out in 98? That's like 6 years ago. Are you going to start bragging how KDE kicks the shit out windows 3.0 next?:) get real. If there's any office suite that's going to get people to be able to use linux as their main desktop (without having to keep a windows boot available) it's either going to be StarOffice (I think they're up to 7 now) or OpenOffice. This goes into the same ownership and loyalty that should be counter to the OSS culture. Rather than having Gnome Office KOffice and OpenOffice compete for the 2% they have in the market, there should me more colaboration in some areas so that as a whole they become better products and so that Linux can gain wider acceptance. It isn't that Apples sucked that allowed MS to win the desktop, it was the lack of good applications. Something as simple as everyone getting together and coming up with a standard file type handling system. Build a colaborative base and let each one add bells and whistles. Kind of like the eclipse and netbeans projects. This is not easy. This is one concept though that Java is working on. Having Java be open source would jeapordize that.
Again, this is a big problem with open source. You will always find more people willing to do something they claim is better from scratch than working with existing projects or investing the time to be able to seriously contribute to existing projects.
Like making it DFSG compilant? Isn't this to contradiction to the rest of your comment?
Uhm.. no. I specifically said I don't think that would work. The fear has to go away of using something in the non-free section. non-free doesn't mean you have to pay for it. It means that you can't plant your flag on it. I meant more things regarding indemnity, distribution, auto-updating etc. Though that might be enough to get it into Debian easier, though it still won't be "Free".
Some of you really need to take a good hard look around you and realize where things are, not where they think they are.
Java has a great deal of penetration in the enterprise. Rather than OSS asking Java to join open up... linux vendors should realize, just like IBM d
I know I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this but it has to be said.
No, ESR's comparison of stock price aren't what did it. They just made him look like an idiot, but his statements really put into question the benefits of open source software.
First, there are open source versions of Java. The problem is, as they are now, they are no where near as good as the "commercial" implementations. ESR begging Sun to open source Java is pretty much an admittion that the open source community cannot develop on it's own something as good as what Sun has developed.
Java is a very popular language. Look at the statistics, more people are using Java than most other free languages such as perl and php. More companies are looking for people with Java experience rather than other languages as well including python. This is fact and I've linked to articles that show the statistics. We're not talking about small differences but orders of magnitude.
What ESR, and others in the OSS community are saying is "Give us Java or we won't use it and you'll suffer". How is this not extortion? As many people that actually work with Java on different platforms can tell you, it is possible ot develop on linux with Java. You don't have to pay anything to do it though you just can't distribute the JDK and JSDK free.
This isn't the first time that ESR made promises that OSS would help a company/technology. Look at netscape. ESR lobbied very hard in the OSS community to get people to join the mozilla project in the beginning. That never really happened. While people do help Mozilla now, it didn't benefit Netscape. Mozilla has also failed to even surpass Netscapes puny browser market share. The OSS model does not always work and ESR has helped prove this.
What has the open sourcing of Netscape done? It's given the OSS community a free commercial software package. What did Netscape gain? Nothing. If Netscape (and related partners/owners) didn't finance the mozilla project for so long, Mozilla wouldn't even be where it is today.
What about OpenOffice? Would it be where it is today if it wasn't developed as a commercial project, then bought and open sourced? Do ANY of the completely open source office suites come close to doing what OO.org does? No they don't. And you're kidding yourselves if you think they do.
It's not to hard to read between the lines and see that if OSS really did work, then they wouldn't need Sun to set Java free. If OSS did work, Gnu Classpath would be a lot further along than it is today.
Are there exceptions to this? Apache is a great OSS project but how would it have turned out if it didn't get the corporate support it did? The Linux kernel? The mother of all OSS projects. Does this now give validity to SCO's claim that OSS can't do it alone and does need help from a successful commercial entity? (How SCO thinks they are a successful commercial entity is another matter) I don't believe SCO has a valid claim but ESR's letter doesn't help at all.
If OSS was so great, they wouldn't need Sun to release Java, they would have made their own OSS Java that people would want to use. But they haven't. They're working on it. But it's not there yet. According to ESR they need the boost of Sun's source code. Tell this to the GCJ team. I think they'd be quite put off by it.
Now how can one claim that the OSS community will do great things for you? It just doesn't make any sense.
It's also clear that the majority of people don't contribute to OSS projects, they just use them. Most don't even participate in improving the project by submitting bugs.
I think the OSS community is finally realizing that Java is an important technology. They want to start taking advantage of Java. But the current licensing goes against their Free Software values. My suggestion is this, download and install java. It's pretty easy. Download and install tomcat and start working with the technoligies. I think you'll be very plea
Uhm... not quite. IBM has been calling for Sun to open source java or let loose it's hold of it for a few years now. ESR's open letter just gave them another chance to bring up their arguments since it was already on other people's minds.
Nobody wants to "steal" anything away from Sun. If Sun presented Java as just another proprietary platform, nobody would ask them to do anything. But Sun is presenting it as the alternative to Windows and the friend to open source. If they want the help of the open source community, they have to listen to the demands of the open source community; they don't get something for nothing.
You're quite a bit off base. Sun isn't presenting Java as an alternative to windows, Sun strongly presents alternatives to windows but the majority of these options are based on their solaris environment and aimed at the enterprise. The fact that you even say such a thing makes me question if you even know what java is? The last line is just crap. Just because the open source community wants something and doesn't get it, doesn't mean they can disregard every other thing Sun has done. Is the OSS community now the mafia?
I disagree. Sun may have invested a lot in Java, but that pales in comparison to the amount of work and investment others have made in Java.
Exactly my point. Java is easily extensible and people are able to do a lot of things to java in it's current state. How can you say so many people contribute more to java than sun and then complain that Java needs to be open source? If it was too closed how could this be possible?
I disagree. I think attaching the name "Java" taints the technology. Apart from that, it is simply dishonest because it is not, in any normal sense of the word, a "Java desktop".
You have every right to disagree, but then again you have every right to be wrong as well. If you don't realize that Java has more penetration in the corporate world than Linux you must be living in a cave.
Oh, there, I fully agree. I think Sun's Java implementation is a lost cause
This is really old thinking... especially since the JCP, Sun's JVM has really improved, they're quicker to respond to bugs and sun employees aren't the ones that lead many JSR's.
As for IBM wanting Sun to open source their implementation so that IBM can do the same... if that were true then why would Sun's Simon Phipps have been quoted as saying: "I disagree, I think Java is already open sourced. Why hasn't IBM given its implementation of Java to the open-source community?"
That's not what I meant regarding it's licensing. I think Sun should make it easier for Debian to include Sun's JDK and JSDK in their default install. This is more a personal preference than anything else. Suse licensed the source code from Sun. RedHat includes the Java binaries in many distributions.
If someone would be so kind as to specifically list what would be gained by making the java source open I'd love to hear it. More than just the standard lines about how other people can help fix bugs and improve the code. How about some specifics. And of these things, what are not being addressed by the JCP? Also what are some of these horrendous technical blunders that you're accusing Sun of?
The point is there are open source java's out there. They're apparently not good enough yet so people want sun to release theirs. That's crap. That's like Postgresql demanding Oracle release it's source code.
Notice that the open source java developers aren't making these open calls to sun. They have the confidence that they can do what they set out to do. It's the open source community that doesn't seem to have the confidence in them so they're asking sun to release their version. How ironic. Are you trying to imply open source only works if a company has invested all this time and money in a project and then releases it? Sun bought Netbeans and open sourced it, they bout openoffice and open sourced it as well as some other technologies that they either bought or developed themselves. What has the open source community done for sun?
This whole thing reminds me of another thread I saw on another site. There was a university that owned a large chunk of land. It was a park that they had open to the public and were maintaining. Someone wanted to get this land taken away from them and declared a national preserve so that there could be community control over it so there wouldn't be a fear of the university closing it down and destroying the natural resources and wildlife that lived there.
The university didn't do anything to restrict access or to indicate that they wouldn't maintain the land anymore. In fact they had contributed much to having it remain as pure as it was and to have it accessible.
Don't let the fear of something that might happen be a basis to steal something away from someone that has been working hard on something.
It's much better to help the entity that owns the property than it is to try and take it away. Sun has invested a lot in Java and has been a good custodian of it. Help them make the changes they need to make to it that make sense. Don't try and take it away for no reason.
Java has gained tremendous support, and now Sun is using that support to bring linux to the desktop. While some people may be put off by Sun calling it's desktop environment the Java Desktop instead of the Linux Desktop, understand that "Java" currently has a lot more credibility than "Linux" where Sun is pushing the technology.
The open source community doesn't need Sun to open source java but they do need to get sun to open up their licensing a little bit. Focus on that and take advantage of what benefits that will bring.
[sarcasm]Why not force oracle to open source their DB or IBM to open source WebSphere. You want to see more J2EE implementations out there imagine being able to download and use WebSphere against oracle91 for free.[/sarcasm]
The strict conformance requirements are what makes java so attractive. While the whole "write once run anywhere" line is attacked fiercly, especially on the client side, we do gain many benefits from this conformance.
I can develop a web application on tomcat on my windows development pc. Stage it on a solaris box using resin and deploy it on a web host running linux/resin without recompiling. I don't have to worry about too many optimizations as the JIT compiler on each system will optimize a lot based on the system it's on.
What Sun has done with java has been great. They don't worry about the major players, they worry about everyone, which has helped them bring java to all sorts of platforms including mobile devices. There is nothing keeping anyone from developing their own java libraries as either open or closed source, evidenced by the numours such libraries available today.
Have a problem with the say the standard java libraries do something? Maybe it's a bug. Well just subclass the classes you need to and override those methods and call your classes instead. It doesn't hurt to build a layer of abstraction sometimes and java makes this easy to do and it can solve most issues.
I don't think Sun should open source java. What they're doing with the Java Community Process is working. The competition they are getting from.Net is helping to move things along as well. Look at some of the changes coming in Tiger, they are mainly from the JCP. Also look at some of the things that are being implemented in this new release. They are not new classes or bug fixes. They are clarifications/rewrites of parts of the specification to clear some confusion for people that want to develop their own JVM.
There are too many alterior motives for people to want Sun to release Java. While sun has to worry about losing market share for it's low-mid level servers to Windows and Linux, IBM still has to worry about Sun taking over market share in the main frame market and has already lost the mid level market to sun many years ago. While IBM and Sun have this connection with Java, they compete on some very important parts of their business. I don't think we'd be hearing from IBM if Java was in the hands of someone that wasn't a competitor on other fronts.
This whole mechanism of being able to extend java, without having it be open source is very powerful so I want to emphasize that a little more. The nature of the language allows it. Good developers will know how to take advantage of this, and it's not hard to learn. There are some very simple yet powerful design patterns that people should get familiar with that will really help you do a lot with Java. The language doesn't twist your arm into using them and if you're new you may not know about them but lets not blame Sun or the closed sourceness of Java.
The danger of opensourcing Java is that it will inevitably get forked and you'll have to worry about which JVM you're running your application in. Keep the JVM pure, let the libraries add functionality. It's a very clean and effective way of doing things.
IBM has opensourced Eclipse. The platform that they use to develop their WebSphere development tools. They haven't open sourced their development tools. And I guess this is a little bit backwards but the value to Sun is in Java's base not to their extensions.
As others have mentioned in the past. !OpenSource.equals("Magical Pixie Dust") We saw it with netscape and you can see it on source forge as there are a ton of OS projects that never got the backing that they needed. While mozilla now grows on it's own as OSS, Netscape is pretty much dead and without the financial support of Netscape/AOL-Time Warner, Mozilla would not exist. For different r
Yes... they have very selfish reasons. They want to make money. Lawsuits waste money. Delaying deployment because of legal worries is not the type of thing people want to do.
If IBM finds a better way to make money than with Linux, linux bites it at IBM and becomes more of a niche operating system again. Linux isn't becoming successful because people are putting up their vacation pictures on their old 486's and cable lines using perl, php, whatever. It's because of large, profitable companies looking for a cheaper alternative to traditional Unix platforms. And these companies don't want to have to shut down servers that are handling millions of dollars of transactions.
IBM's linux sales are pretty good but how many of those computers are actually being used? How many are making money for the people that bought them? Is it Linux that's making the money or something else.
IBM's golden goose is there consulting services these days and Websphere. They make big money on mainframes and service contracts as well. Smaller servers with Linux are just a way to get Websphere in the door cheaper.
If.Net makes Websphere unprofitable, IBM will switch back to MS products. I don't think they want to but remember.... they have to keep the money coming in. This isn't some hobby they do when they're off from their real jobs. IBM and Sun have had strained relations because the compete in a lot of the same high margin, low demand spaces. Look at which side IBM has been on when it's come time to implement standards for webservices, wsdl, etc. Ibm needs Java and would rather it not be in the hands of their competitors. If Sun bites it I don't think that Linux will be too far behind in the corporate arena. People like linux because it's so much like unix but free. If Unix ever completely dissapears Linux better have a huge (and I mean really huge) and rapidly growing install base on successful projects before if it's to succeed.
I just wish there were more people considering the commercial viabilitity of their projects rather than touting how open source or Linux is better because of this and that. I don't want to sound like I'm belittling anything or one... but Linux is an Operating System. You install Linux on a box and plug it into the internet you're not making money unless you're selling shell accounts to people that want to play around with linux command lines and I guarantee you that's now how money is being made online. Hell, it's not even linux that makes linux so popular. It's GNU and other free software. Now instead of having your free gnu software on an expensive machine and OS, you have it on commodity hardware with a cheap/free OS.
Just from reading slashdot you hve to wonder if it's true that too many cooks really do spoil the brew. It's a good thing that there are practical people like Linus that watch over the final product.
I think it would benefit Microsoft if they made the framework for.NET open source. The dedication and expertise of the Open Source developer community would greatly enhance the reputation of.NET, leading to wider global deployment.
You have absolutely no concept of what the rest of the world (non open source groupies) think do you?
Anybody else that one of the biggest victims here may be the GPL?
IBM seems to have screwed SCO by concentrating more on their Linux strategy. Yay for the Linux community but what happens down the road.
IBM is one of the biggest reasons why people feel safe using Linux. Java is one of the biggest reasons why IBM is using Linux.
If Sun/Java go down the tubes we know what's going to take over and if it does, bye bye IBM Linux connection.
Just seems like too many people are interested in winning small victories for Linux and not enough people looking for the big picture.
Lax typing doesn't make someone stupid.
I applaud all the english majors that have finally found a way to contribute to society and to this forum. I guess McDonalds can't hire everyone either.
You're not paying twice. You're paying a portion and the rest is subsidised by advertising. Unless a station is funded through public support, government, private industry, you pay a lot more to subscribe to it.
Everything needs to be free to some of you people. In addition to being free you also want to bypass advertising as well.
So what do you think is going to happen if conventional advertising is no longer feasable on television? Are networks going to charge a monthly subscription fee like cable/sat? Are the network execs going to bead there hair, wear flip flops and togas and decide to give away their services at no cost (along with flowers at the airport) so that society can benefit from watching 5 annoying adults drinking coffee? No, what's going to happen is that commercials are going to merge into regular programming more seemlessly so that it's harder to filter out, become more annoying and more disruptive.
Look at what's been happening online. Ads are becoming more pervasive, too many sites have pop-ups, advertising is cutting into content to make it unreadable.
So the networks get uptight and work on this new type of technology.
So rather than letting Ad agencies fund television, we'll put them out of business because we can't be inconvienienced for a few commercials.
Or maybe we'll get the pleasure of having to explain to the next generation "No, the president doesn't really live in DisneyLand, it's just in-line advertising.":)
It's not unique to online crime and nobody said this sort of thing doesn't happen in other areas.
Anybody who appears to be part of the problem is guilty, and anybody can appear to be part of the problem if the government doesn't understand what the hell is going on.
One of the big benefits is going to be cooling. As more and more components that operate faster and faster keep getting put into smaller and smaller enclosures anything that can improve the airflow within the case is going to increase server reliability. There are 2u cases that support up to 9 drives. 9 15k drives along with your 2-4 proccessors and memory tends to get quite hot. Even though there are fans behind the drive bays they hit a partial wall of ribbon cables.
More importantly, ATA drives are approaching SCSI performance. What fun would it be if SCSI didn't keep raising the bar:)
I agree with you. The problem is governments feel pressured to do something about the problem.
They want to have tangible proof that they are making progress in this arena. Unfortunately, the people that are engaging in illegal activities online know what they're doing is illegal. So they cover their tracks to make it sufficiently difficult to be tracked down. Gov't officials don't want to look like they are sitting around with their thumbs up their asses so they go after the ISP's that don't even know the stuff is on their servers. Hopefully, they won't be that agressive towards the innocent ISP's.
You're right. They should be given the same common carrier status but some administrators really aren't that keen on how the internet works yet. It is also a bit trickier because unlike a phone conversation that is transmitted only during the connection, web content is a persistant medium that is constantly available.
Although some of the wording seems reasonable, you always have to be careful when you go down that path (slippery slope).
My biggest concern is the "voluntary" moderation ISP's might be asked to undertake is going to seriously cut into their profits. Not just because of the expense of moderation but primarily because "legitimate" porn sites tend to make up a good chunk most ISP's revenue.
Slashdot Mirror
Solaris Express is a program that they are using to give people early access to sun software. Solaris 10 is not solaris express
Boy, I really wish I was able to moderate right now. I'd mod you up all I could
There trying to keep it a secret but apparently they found a bikini top and a condom wrapper.
Why? Who made this decision? That's almost like saying all hammers should be free. If hammers were free we'd have people running around building homes because they have their new tool and we wouldn't have to worry about the homeless any more as a result. There's no value in the hammer, only in what you can do with it. Don't worry about making 12.99 for your hammer, show people how great a bench you can build with that hammer and make your money that way. I make benches. I would love to use a hammer to help me make my benches but I can't until it's free. And you could make hammers free if you made benches, or bird houses or the like. We, the community that wants you to release your hammer to the world can make quite some good money doing what we do... but for some reason, we can't seem to be able to buy a hammer.
The infrastructure takes time and money to develop, why shouldn't the person putting in that time and money be compensated for it in some way? It's not YOU that's paying for it in most cases, it's the people that need to get their applications certified java compliant such as VM creators.
Right now, there aren't many organizations that can really look over the development of Java other than Sun and in some respects IBM (thought they do some funky stuff and I don't know how comfy I'd feel about someone that had their own anti trust problems years back looking over something as important as Java). So chances are Sun will be a big player if Java gets open sourced. Probably serving a similar role as Linus servers for the Linux kernel.
The way Java is developed now really levels the playing field. First there's a specification, and the team that comes up with that specification is required to create a free reference implementation that may or may not include the source code. In addtion, they must come up with a testing suite so that others who develop to that spec can verify if they've conformed to it. I can't remember now if it's in all cases the test suite is free or that it can be free. Sun even puts a big chunk of money aside for compatability testing support for non profits and educational entities. Actually Sun's been pretty good with licensing recently on the non-prof and ed side lately.
You open source it, people start developing the stuff they want, they don't start with a specification, the're will be a lot of duplicate work and a lot of stupid work.
We're not talking about a few tens of thousands of people here that use this language like maybe some of the other open source languages. We're talkinga bout many developers worldwide, billions of dollars invested by the corporate world in implementing Java solutions. Open sourcing Java can have some very bad effects.
First of all... We ALL know what's going to happen once it gets open sourced. The OSS community will start working on it. They'll come to the conclusion that what's currently there is the biggest steaming pile of crap they've seen so they'll start rewriting it. 2 years later we'll finally be back up to compatibility with Java 1.2 and J2EE-ish. :)
Come to think of it. What's the deal with cables? Cables are absolutely the wrong way to go. I see cables having their purpose though but not how they intend.
You'd need a very fast way to defy gravity and climb that cable. I say screw the cable. We need bungee cords. it's going to increase the speed at which we can get objects into outer space. Not to mention the revenues stream from all those GenX Addrenalin junkie millionaires out there that would want a ride.
I just wonder if they'll be putting in one of those security cams so that security gaurds can keep themselves entertained watching couples fool around on the over night shift.
That's just silly. First of all. Claiming sun deprecates API on a whim is false. Especially now with the JCP. What I have personally seen are api's deprecated when they were implemented initially in a way that didn't make sense. Hindsight is always 20/20. And when they do deprecate something. It's there for quite some time so that it doesn't kill your existing code until you get a chance to make changes. If you let people make changes they think don't are great but the Java community doesn't, they might fork their changes. Also what is the guarantee the OSS community won't one day decide. "Eh, we're tired of this Java thing." and stop supporting it? You don't have to search long to find examples of projects being abbandoned on sourceforge. The point is you don't like Sun having control and feel better when the OSS community has more of that control. The problem is that while OSS is making inroads, it is because people can get it for free or really cheap. Not because there is a team of global developers working on it. There are surveys all over the place that confirm this. Sun has credibility, Java has credibility, stop trying to pretend they don't or trying to tarnish their reputations.
Mozilla ...
Still... Where would mozilla be without Netscape? And what happened to the benefits for Netscape? Show me how OSS saved Netscape rather than got a hold of it's code and ran with it.
KOffice and Gnome Office, to name two, have surpassed OpenOffice in usability and speed and have long surpassed the funcionality of StarOffice 5.x
Ok, back in the slashbox we go. This contradicts what users seem to be saying even in kde-forum. Didn't StarOffice 5.0 come out in 98? That's like 6 years ago. Are you going to start bragging how KDE kicks the shit out windows 3.0 next? :) get real. If there's any office suite that's going to get people to be able to use linux as their main desktop (without having to keep a windows boot available) it's either going to be StarOffice (I think they're up to 7 now) or OpenOffice. This goes into the same ownership and loyalty that should be counter to the OSS culture. Rather than having Gnome Office KOffice and OpenOffice compete for the 2% they have in the market, there should me more colaboration in some areas so that as a whole they become better products and so that Linux can gain wider acceptance. It isn't that Apples sucked that allowed MS to win the desktop, it was the lack of good applications. Something as simple as everyone getting together and coming up with a standard file type handling system. Build a colaborative base and let each one add bells and whistles. Kind of like the eclipse and netbeans projects. This is not easy. This is one concept though that Java is working on. Having Java be open source would jeapordize that.
Again, this is a big problem with open source. You will always find more people willing to do something they claim is better from scratch than working with existing projects or investing the time to be able to seriously contribute to existing projects.
Like making it DFSG compilant? Isn't this to contradiction to the rest of your comment?
Uhm.. no. I specifically said I don't think that would work. The fear has to go away of using something in the non-free section. non-free doesn't mean you have to pay for it. It means that you can't plant your flag on it. I meant more things regarding indemnity, distribution, auto-updating etc. Though that might be enough to get it into Debian easier, though it still won't be "Free".
Some of you really need to take a good hard look around you and realize where things are, not where they think they are.
Java has a great deal of penetration in the enterprise. Rather than OSS asking Java to join open up... linux vendors should realize, just like IBM d
you really need to read what was said. IBM did not say you give us the spec will give you our code. They said they'd both contribute code.
I know I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this but it has to be said.
No, ESR's comparison of stock price aren't what did it. They just made him look like an idiot, but his statements really put into question the benefits of open source software.
First, there are open source versions of Java. The problem is, as they are now, they are no where near as good as the "commercial" implementations. ESR begging Sun to open source Java is pretty much an admittion that the open source community cannot develop on it's own something as good as what Sun has developed.
Java is a very popular language. Look at the statistics, more people are using Java than most other free languages such as perl and php. More companies are looking for people with Java experience rather than other languages as well including python. This is fact and I've linked to articles that show the statistics. We're not talking about small differences but orders of magnitude.
What ESR, and others in the OSS community are saying is "Give us Java or we won't use it and you'll suffer". How is this not extortion? As many people that actually work with Java on different platforms can tell you, it is possible ot develop on linux with Java. You don't have to pay anything to do it though you just can't distribute the JDK and JSDK free.
This isn't the first time that ESR made promises that OSS would help a company/technology. Look at netscape. ESR lobbied very hard in the OSS community to get people to join the mozilla project in the beginning. That never really happened. While people do help Mozilla now, it didn't benefit Netscape. Mozilla has also failed to even surpass Netscapes puny browser market share. The OSS model does not always work and ESR has helped prove this.
What has the open sourcing of Netscape done? It's given the OSS community a free commercial software package. What did Netscape gain? Nothing. If Netscape (and related partners/owners) didn't finance the mozilla project for so long, Mozilla wouldn't even be where it is today.
What about OpenOffice? Would it be where it is today if it wasn't developed as a commercial project, then bought and open sourced? Do ANY of the completely open source office suites come close to doing what OO.org does? No they don't. And you're kidding yourselves if you think they do.
It's not to hard to read between the lines and see that if OSS really did work, then they wouldn't need Sun to set Java free. If OSS did work, Gnu Classpath would be a lot further along than it is today.
Are there exceptions to this? Apache is a great OSS project but how would it have turned out if it didn't get the corporate support it did? The Linux kernel? The mother of all OSS projects. Does this now give validity to SCO's claim that OSS can't do it alone and does need help from a successful commercial entity? (How SCO thinks they are a successful commercial entity is another matter) I don't believe SCO has a valid claim but ESR's letter doesn't help at all.
If OSS was so great, they wouldn't need Sun to release Java, they would have made their own OSS Java that people would want to use. But they haven't. They're working on it. But it's not there yet. According to ESR they need the boost of Sun's source code. Tell this to the GCJ team. I think they'd be quite put off by it.
Now how can one claim that the OSS community will do great things for you? It just doesn't make any sense.
It's also clear that the majority of people don't contribute to OSS projects, they just use them. Most don't even participate in improving the project by submitting bugs.
I think the OSS community is finally realizing that Java is an important technology. They want to start taking advantage of Java. But the current licensing goes against their Free Software values. My suggestion is this, download and install java. It's pretty easy. Download and install tomcat and start working with the technoligies. I think you'll be very plea
Who's fault is that?
Uhm... not quite. IBM has been calling for Sun to open source java or let loose it's hold of it for a few years now. ESR's open letter just gave them another chance to bring up their arguments since it was already on other people's minds.
This is a great summary of a lot of the things that have been said against open sourcing Java. An entry from Charles Ditzel
You're quite a bit off base. Sun isn't presenting Java as an alternative to windows, Sun strongly presents alternatives to windows but the majority of these options are based on their solaris environment and aimed at the enterprise. The fact that you even say such a thing makes me question if you even know what java is? The last line is just crap. Just because the open source community wants something and doesn't get it, doesn't mean they can disregard every other thing Sun has done. Is the OSS community now the mafia?
I disagree. Sun may have invested a lot in Java, but that pales in comparison to the amount of work and investment others have made in Java.
Exactly my point. Java is easily extensible and people are able to do a lot of things to java in it's current state. How can you say so many people contribute more to java than sun and then complain that Java needs to be open source? If it was too closed how could this be possible?
I disagree. I think attaching the name "Java" taints the technology. Apart from that, it is simply dishonest because it is not, in any normal sense of the word, a "Java desktop".
You have every right to disagree, but then again you have every right to be wrong as well. If you don't realize that Java has more penetration in the corporate world than Linux you must be living in a cave.
Oh, there, I fully agree. I think Sun's Java implementation is a lost cause
This is really old thinking... especially since the JCP, Sun's JVM has really improved, they're quicker to respond to bugs and sun employees aren't the ones that lead many JSR's.
As for IBM wanting Sun to open source their implementation so that IBM can do the same... if that were true then why would Sun's Simon Phipps have been quoted as saying: "I disagree, I think Java is already open sourced. Why hasn't IBM given its implementation of Java to the open-source community?"
That's not what I meant regarding it's licensing. I think Sun should make it easier for Debian to include Sun's JDK and JSDK in their default install. This is more a personal preference than anything else. Suse licensed the source code from Sun. RedHat includes the Java binaries in many distributions.
If someone would be so kind as to specifically list what would be gained by making the java source open I'd love to hear it. More than just the standard lines about how other people can help fix bugs and improve the code. How about some specifics. And of these things, what are not being addressed by the JCP? Also what are some of these horrendous technical blunders that you're accusing Sun of?
The point is there are open source java's out there. They're apparently not good enough yet so people want sun to release theirs. That's crap. That's like Postgresql demanding Oracle release it's source code.
Notice that the open source java developers aren't making these open calls to sun. They have the confidence that they can do what they set out to do. It's the open source community that doesn't seem to have the confidence in them so they're asking sun to release their version. How ironic. Are you trying to imply open source only works if a company has invested all this time and money in a project and then releases it? Sun bought Netbeans and open sourced it, they bout openoffice and open sourced it as well as some other technologies that they either bought or developed themselves. What has the open source community done for sun?
That's just rediculous. The majority of IBM stuff is for OS/2. Click into the bug report and you'll see.
This whole thing reminds me of another thread I saw on another site. There was a university that owned a large chunk of land. It was a park that they had open to the public and were maintaining. Someone wanted to get this land taken away from them and declared a national preserve so that there could be community control over it so there wouldn't be a fear of the university closing it down and destroying the natural resources and wildlife that lived there.
The university didn't do anything to restrict access or to indicate that they wouldn't maintain the land anymore. In fact they had contributed much to having it remain as pure as it was and to have it accessible.
Don't let the fear of something that might happen be a basis to steal something away from someone that has been working hard on something.
It's much better to help the entity that owns the property than it is to try and take it away. Sun has invested a lot in Java and has been a good custodian of it. Help them make the changes they need to make to it that make sense. Don't try and take it away for no reason.
Java has gained tremendous support, and now Sun is using that support to bring linux to the desktop. While some people may be put off by Sun calling it's desktop environment the Java Desktop instead of the Linux Desktop, understand that "Java" currently has a lot more credibility than "Linux" where Sun is pushing the technology.
The open source community doesn't need Sun to open source java but they do need to get sun to open up their licensing a little bit. Focus on that and take advantage of what benefits that will bring.
[sarcasm]Why not force oracle to open source their DB or IBM to open source WebSphere. You want to see more J2EE implementations out there imagine being able to download and use WebSphere against oracle91 for free.[/sarcasm]
.Net is helping to move things along as well. Look at some of the changes coming in Tiger, they are mainly from the JCP. Also look at some of the things that are being implemented in this new release. They are not new classes or bug fixes. They are clarifications/rewrites of parts of the specification to clear some confusion for people that want to develop their own JVM.
The strict conformance requirements are what makes java so attractive. While the whole "write once run anywhere" line is attacked fiercly, especially on the client side, we do gain many benefits from this conformance.
I can develop a web application on tomcat on my windows development pc. Stage it on a solaris box using resin and deploy it on a web host running linux/resin without recompiling. I don't have to worry about too many optimizations as the JIT compiler on each system will optimize a lot based on the system it's on.
What Sun has done with java has been great. They don't worry about the major players, they worry about everyone, which has helped them bring java to all sorts of platforms including mobile devices. There is nothing keeping anyone from developing their own java libraries as either open or closed source, evidenced by the numours such libraries available today.
Have a problem with the say the standard java libraries do something? Maybe it's a bug. Well just subclass the classes you need to and override those methods and call your classes instead. It doesn't hurt to build a layer of abstraction sometimes and java makes this easy to do and it can solve most issues.
I don't think Sun should open source java. What they're doing with the Java Community Process is working. The competition they are getting from
There are too many alterior motives for people to want Sun to release Java. While sun has to worry about losing market share for it's low-mid level servers to Windows and Linux, IBM still has to worry about Sun taking over market share in the main frame market and has already lost the mid level market to sun many years ago. While IBM and Sun have this connection with Java, they compete on some very important parts of their business. I don't think we'd be hearing from IBM if Java was in the hands of someone that wasn't a competitor on other fronts.
This whole mechanism of being able to extend java, without having it be open source is very powerful so I want to emphasize that a little more. The nature of the language allows it. Good developers will know how to take advantage of this, and it's not hard to learn. There are some very simple yet powerful design patterns that people should get familiar with that will really help you do a lot with Java. The language doesn't twist your arm into using them and if you're new you may not know about them but lets not blame Sun or the closed sourceness of Java.
The danger of opensourcing Java is that it will inevitably get forked and you'll have to worry about which JVM you're running your application in. Keep the JVM pure, let the libraries add functionality. It's a very clean and effective way of doing things.
IBM has opensourced Eclipse. The platform that they use to develop their WebSphere development tools. They haven't open sourced their development tools. And I guess this is a little bit backwards but the value to Sun is in Java's base not to their extensions.
As others have mentioned in the past. !OpenSource.equals("Magical Pixie Dust") We saw it with netscape and you can see it on source forge as there are a ton of OS projects that never got the backing that they needed. While mozilla now grows on it's own as OSS, Netscape is pretty much dead and without the financial support of Netscape/AOL-Time Warner, Mozilla would not exist. For different r
Yes... they have very selfish reasons. They want to make money. Lawsuits waste money. Delaying deployment because of legal worries is not the type of thing people want to do.
.Net makes Websphere unprofitable, IBM will switch back to MS products. I don't think they want to but remember.... they have to keep the money coming in. This isn't some hobby they do when they're off from their real jobs. IBM and Sun have had strained relations because the compete in a lot of the same high margin, low demand spaces. Look at which side IBM has been on when it's come time to implement standards for webservices, wsdl, etc. Ibm needs Java and would rather it not be in the hands of their competitors. If Sun bites it I don't think that Linux will be too far behind in the corporate arena. People like linux because it's so much like unix but free. If Unix ever completely dissapears Linux better have a huge (and I mean really huge) and rapidly growing install base on successful projects before if it's to succeed.
If IBM finds a better way to make money than with Linux, linux bites it at IBM and becomes more of a niche operating system again. Linux isn't becoming successful because people are putting up their vacation pictures on their old 486's and cable lines using perl, php, whatever. It's because of large, profitable companies looking for a cheaper alternative to traditional Unix platforms. And these companies don't want to have to shut down servers that are handling millions of dollars of transactions.
IBM's linux sales are pretty good but how many of those computers are actually being used? How many are making money for the people that bought them? Is it Linux that's making the money or something else.
IBM's golden goose is there consulting services these days and Websphere. They make big money on mainframes and service contracts as well. Smaller servers with Linux are just a way to get Websphere in the door cheaper.
If
I just wish there were more people considering the commercial viabilitity of their projects rather than touting how open source or Linux is better because of this and that. I don't want to sound like I'm belittling anything or one... but Linux is an Operating System. You install Linux on a box and plug it into the internet you're not making money unless you're selling shell accounts to people that want to play around with linux command lines and I guarantee you that's now how money is being made online. Hell, it's not even linux that makes linux so popular. It's GNU and other free software. Now instead of having your free gnu software on an expensive machine and OS, you have it on commodity hardware with a cheap/free OS.
Just from reading slashdot you hve to wonder if it's true that too many cooks really do spoil the brew. It's a good thing that there are practical people like Linus that watch over the final product.
Anybody else that one of the biggest victims here may be the GPL? IBM seems to have screwed SCO by concentrating more on their Linux strategy. Yay for the Linux community but what happens down the road. IBM is one of the biggest reasons why people feel safe using Linux. Java is one of the biggest reasons why IBM is using Linux. If Sun/Java go down the tubes we know what's going to take over and if it does, bye bye IBM Linux connection. Just seems like too many people are interested in winning small victories for Linux and not enough people looking for the big picture.
Lax typing doesn't make someone stupid. I applaud all the english majors that have finally found a way to contribute to society and to this forum. I guess McDonalds can't hire everyone either.
You're not paying twice. You're paying a portion and the rest is subsidised by advertising. Unless a station is funded through public support, government, private industry, you pay a lot more to subscribe to it.
So what do you think is going to happen if conventional advertising is no longer feasable on television? Are networks going to charge a monthly subscription fee like cable/sat? Are the network execs going to bead there hair, wear flip flops and togas and decide to give away their services at no cost (along with flowers at the airport) so that society can benefit from watching 5 annoying adults drinking coffee? No, what's going to happen is that commercials are going to merge into regular programming more seemlessly so that it's harder to filter out, become more annoying and more disruptive.
Look at what's been happening online. Ads are becoming more pervasive, too many sites have pop-ups, advertising is cutting into content to make it unreadable.
So the networks get uptight and work on this new type of technology.
So rather than letting Ad agencies fund television, we'll put them out of business because we can't be inconvienienced for a few commercials.
Or maybe we'll get the pleasure of having to explain to the next generation "No, the president doesn't really live in DisneyLand, it's just in-line advertising." :)
Anybody who appears to be part of the problem is guilty, and anybody can appear to be part of the problem if the government doesn't understand what the hell is going on.
One of the big benefits is going to be cooling. As more and more components that operate faster and faster keep getting put into smaller and smaller enclosures anything that can improve the airflow within the case is going to increase server reliability. There are 2u cases that support up to 9 drives. 9 15k drives along with your 2-4 proccessors and memory tends to get quite hot. Even though there are fans behind the drive bays they hit a partial wall of ribbon cables.
More importantly, ATA drives are approaching SCSI performance. What fun would it be if SCSI didn't keep raising the bar :)
They want to have tangible proof that they are making progress in this arena. Unfortunately, the people that are engaging in illegal activities online know what they're doing is illegal. So they cover their tracks to make it sufficiently difficult to be tracked down. Gov't officials don't want to look like they are sitting around with their thumbs up their asses so they go after the ISP's that don't even know the stuff is on their servers. Hopefully, they won't be that agressive towards the innocent ISP's.
You're right. They should be given the same common carrier status but some administrators really aren't that keen on how the internet works yet. It is also a bit trickier because unlike a phone conversation that is transmitted only during the connection, web content is a persistant medium that is constantly available.
Although some of the wording seems reasonable, you always have to be careful when you go down that path (slippery slope).
My biggest concern is the "voluntary" moderation ISP's might be asked to undertake is going to seriously cut into their profits. Not just because of the expense of moderation but primarily because "legitimate" porn sites tend to make up a good chunk most ISP's revenue.