Lyons suggests Cisco should fight rather than settle.
What would Cisco's argument be? We used your software, but we didn't like your license, so we're not going to abide by it?
Cisco should thank their lucky stars that Linksys was only stealing from the open source community and not from another company like Microsoft, where "hit men" are something worth worrying about.
I have a very good book on my shelf by Greenspun that taught me a lot about web programming, but from a very theoretical view.
At first glance, the SUV analogy seems to make sense, but there are a number of key differences. One thing going for the analogy is the idea that if you're going to get a cup of milk at the street corner, a Hummer is overkill when a motorscooter will do. If his students' project was the equivalent of getting a cup of milk than they were probably in over their head with Java.
Where the analogy falls apart is in the idea that SUVs are loaded with features that aren't really used. True for SUVs, not true for Java. Also, SUVs (particularly the big, fancy ones like Hummer's) are typically for people with lots of dough who don't care that they're not getting their money's worth. (Profit on a Saturn is $300 a car, profit on a high-end SUV can exceed $15,000.) Unlike SUVs, Java can be downloaded and used free of charge. It's available to the masses and, not only that, virtually all of the feature are used to great effect.
I think Greenspun uses an SUV as a comparison because he's (possibly unconsciously) taking a dig at Java. People already have a fairly negative worldview of SUVs. He mentions that his friend with a Hummer got stuck in the desert, indirectly suggesting that this is what happens with Java. The truth of the matter, of course, is that if Java was an SUV, it would not get stuck offroading. It's the one vehicle I'd want to have if I were stuck in the mud.
Maybe Greenspun's rant should be ignored entirely, though, because he says things like:
JSP is fantastically simpler than "J2EE", which is the recommended-by-Sun way of building applications, but still it seems to be too complex for seniors and graduate students in the MIT computer science program, despite the fact that they all had at least one semester of Java experience in 6.170.
JSP is obviously part of J2EE so the sentence fails to make sense. I think he means JSP vs Servlets (or vs. EJBs). He seems unaware that Sun's actual recommendation for web sites is JSP Model 2 (not used in his test.) What distresses me most about this sentence is that MIT CS students have gotten this far and are not using MVC. Something's wrong in their curriculum.
His side rant on binding database variables is also flawed. He's upset about the Java's SQL "PreparedStatements" using question marks for variable binding. Even if he's using JSP Model 1, he still shouldn't be dropping that kind of code in the middle of his JSPs. He should be centering his criticism at the JSTL's SQL tags, where the SQL code should really go.
I think the bottom line is that Sun has spent little effort concentrating on JSP Model 1 and as a result, there is little support from Sun for inlining business objects and database code directly into JSP files. However, they did create a framework that allows programmers to build their own tag libraries. And the tag libraries out there are pretty impressive. Shortly after JSP was released, a vendor rewrote all of Allaire's ColdFusion tags as Java tags. When I read that, I immediately realized that Java was a much better investment of my time than most commerical off-the-shelf solutions.
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Lyons suggests Cisco should fight rather than settle.
What would Cisco's argument be? We used your software, but we didn't like your license, so we're not going to abide by it?
Cisco should thank their lucky stars that Linksys was only stealing from the open source community and not from another company like Microsoft, where "hit men" are something worth worrying about.
I have a very good book on my shelf by Greenspun that taught me a lot about web programming, but from a very theoretical view.
At first glance, the SUV analogy seems to make sense, but there are a number of key differences. One thing going for the analogy is the idea that if you're going to get a cup of milk at the street corner, a Hummer is overkill when a motorscooter will do. If his students' project was the equivalent of getting a cup of milk than they were probably in over their head with Java.
Where the analogy falls apart is in the idea that SUVs are loaded with features that aren't really used. True for SUVs, not true for Java. Also, SUVs (particularly the big, fancy ones like Hummer's) are typically for people with lots of dough who don't care that they're not getting their money's worth. (Profit on a Saturn is $300 a car, profit on a high-end SUV can exceed $15,000.) Unlike SUVs, Java can be downloaded and used free of charge. It's available to the masses and, not only that, virtually all of the feature are used to great effect.
I think Greenspun uses an SUV as a comparison because he's (possibly unconsciously) taking a dig at Java. People already have a fairly negative worldview of SUVs. He mentions that his friend with a Hummer got stuck in the desert, indirectly suggesting that this is what happens with Java. The truth of the matter, of course, is that if Java was an SUV, it would not get stuck offroading. It's the one vehicle I'd want to have if I were stuck in the mud.
Maybe Greenspun's rant should be ignored entirely, though, because he says things like:
JSP is fantastically simpler than "J2EE", which is the recommended-by-Sun way of building applications, but still it seems to be too complex for seniors and graduate students in the MIT computer science program, despite the fact that they all had at least one semester of Java experience in 6.170.
JSP is obviously part of J2EE so the sentence fails to make sense. I think he means JSP vs Servlets (or vs. EJBs). He seems unaware that Sun's actual recommendation for web sites is JSP Model 2 (not used in his test.) What distresses me most about this sentence is that MIT CS students have gotten this far and are not using MVC. Something's wrong in their curriculum.
His side rant on binding database variables is also flawed. He's upset about the Java's SQL "PreparedStatements" using question marks for variable binding. Even if he's using JSP Model 1, he still shouldn't be dropping that kind of code in the middle of his JSPs. He should be centering his criticism at the JSTL's SQL tags, where the SQL code should really go.
I think the bottom line is that Sun has spent little effort concentrating on JSP Model 1 and as a result, there is little support from Sun for inlining business objects and database code directly into JSP files. However, they did create a framework that allows programmers to build their own tag libraries. And the tag libraries out there are pretty impressive. Shortly after JSP was released, a vendor rewrote all of Allaire's ColdFusion tags as Java tags. When I read that, I immediately realized that Java was a much better investment of my time than most commerical off-the-shelf solutions.