And Sun a calling themselves pro-open source? [LWN.net]

And Sun a calling themselves pro-open source?

Posted May 9, 2005 20:25 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
Parent article: A proposal for a free Java implementation

How can they stand by, seeing all this effort being wasted, and not release Java-proper as open source? There is nothing to lose for them and everything to gain (heck, someone may actually be interested in _fixing_bugs_ in Java for a change)...

Beyond me, just beyond me.

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And Sun a calling themselves pro-open source?

Posted May 10, 2005 1:56 UTC (Tue) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link]

Sun isn't pro-open source, they're pro-Sun. Obviously since there is a lot of people asking for free Java, there must be some value in Java. Therefore "giving it away" would be a poor business decision on their part, at least in the classic sense.

The only thing that will change this is to commodify the JVM by developing a free implementation. Then Sun will have nothing to lose by opening up their code. At that point, however, it will hardly matter.

This all just support's Sun's key premise:

Posted May 10, 2005 2:52 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]

Sun has Sun for a long time that Java needs to be centrally controlled to ensure compatibility. All of these fractured efforts, with various levels of compliance, sure make for a muddy development environment. Do SableVM files work with Kaffe? Do Kaffe files work with gcj? Confused yet?

Sun isn't off the hook either, they have the same issues with versions of their VM.

Meanwhile look at Python and Perl. No code portability issues. The same runtime is ported to most any platform you want. To hell with open specs and closed implementations. The open implementations/write your own spec from studying the code type platforms seem to be fulfilling all of the WORA promises of Java.

This all just support's Sun's key premise:

Posted May 11, 2005 7:38 UTC (Wed) by skybrian (subscriber, #365) [Link]

A basic Java development environment is actually pretty simple. Download the Sun JDK and run
either Eclipse or buy IntelliJ.

No, it's not open source, but that's what most Java developers do. While gcj, Kaffe, and so on will
hopefully be useful someday, they're not really ready for prime time and aren't used much yet
except for reasons of ideology.

Not an option for many platforms

Posted May 15, 2005 14:28 UTC (Sun) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link]

This only works on Sun-blessed platforms. And given recent experience with other closed systems related to the kernel, I'm amazed anyone would consider this an option. (No, Sun probably won't pull everyone's license to use the free-beer JVM, but they will likely make it run faster on their own platforms than others', and have little to no incentive to make it run on, say, Debian Alpha.)