Debian and Nexenta collide [LWN.net]

Debian and Nexenta collide

Posted Nov 9, 2005 23:06 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
In reply to: Debian and Nexenta collide by cventers
Parent article: Debian and Nexenta collide

> bizarro-world of half-open technology?

Probably the best description of Sun and their open source strategies I've seen in a while.

<rant>
On one hand, they contributed large chunks of LGPL code, like OOo. On the other, they have to do it "the Sun way" (or as one of the old Solaris admins that I work with would say: "In their infinite wisdom, Sun decided to <insert bizarro thing here>"). So, most of the stuff that exists in the FOSS world (e.g. font rendering) had to be duplicated in OOo, you have to install gazillion things to build the darn thing and then it doesn't build cleanly on x86_64 (as we learned from recent discussions here on LWN) etc. And then there is Java (no, not just the OOo pullution with it). The big lovers of open source, which have requests sitting in their bug system to produce x86_64 plugin for months, don't want to give the code to FOSS developers to do it for them. And, they are letting GCJ/classpath people waste their time on an alternative implementation, when there is no rational explanation for keeping Java proprietary. Then there is Solaris, or should I say "Open"Solaris. It's half open, released under "spanner in the works" licence in order to prevent things from jumping into their (now) long time enemy Linux.
</rant>

There is no doubt that Sun did some great things for open source, but if there ever was a company with a confusing (open source) strategy, it's Sun.

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Debian and Nexenta collide

Posted Nov 10, 2005 8:07 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

And then there is Java (no, not just the OOo pullution with it). The big lovers of open source, which have requests sitting in their bug system to produce x86_64 plugin for months, don't want to give the code to FOSS developers to do it for them. And, they are letting GCJ/classpath people waste their time on an alternative implementation, when there is no rational explanation for keeping Java proprietary.

I now this is part of your <rant> block, but rest assured that we are not wasting our time :) As you can see from our bi-monthly releases or from reading planet.classpath.org we are having a lot of fun and making a lot of progress providing an technical (and in our eyes better and more flexible) alternative for the core class libraries and java langauge compilers and tools then any proprietary offer. Through the integration of GNU Classpath/GCJ into GCC we have (indirectly) improved a lot of the fundementals of the GNU system, and through alternative systems like IKVM.NET we bring the java programming language and all programs written in it in realms that nobody could imagine before. Sure it would be nice if Sun would help out and released (parts of) of their proprietary implementation under some GPL-compatible terms. But we have such critical mass now that the projects stand on their own and provide people with real Free Software alternatives for the proprietary java platform if they choose to use such a language.

Classpath and GCJ

Posted Nov 10, 2005 16:30 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

Well done. I've been impressed again and again by the progress of Classpath and GCJ. When these projects are complete I suspect Sun will discover that even a paranoid proprietary license won't allow them to keep control of the Java community.

Tricky wording

Posted Nov 10, 2005 19:46 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> not wasting our time

Just to make myself clear, I think neither that GCJ/classpath is a waste of time, nor do I think you guys are wasting time. I think that Sun are being irresponsible by letting you guys spend preciuos time on this work, while they could have (and should have) released their JDK under the GPL long, long time ago. If they did that, Java would probably be at version 5.0 (no, _real_ version 5.0). And, every Linux distro would be able to ship a _fully_ _functional_ JDK, with absolutely no strings attached. How much more FOSS software would have been written in Java if that were the case? Truckloads. Simply because distributors would be able to _rely_ on the fact that it is always there.

Believe me, I admire what has been done with GCJ and classpath. But I hate to see a wasted effort in the FOSS world when there is no good reason for it. And, all because of the company that supposedly "invented" open source, but cannot understand the basic concepts around it.

Tricky wording

Posted Nov 18, 2005 3:53 UTC (Fri) by robilad (guest, #27163) [Link]

Sure, there could be a lot of great things Sun could have done in the past 10 years to advance the state of the art in that area. They've made it clear that they won't open up their implemetation, come what may, though, for whatever reasons they have. It's their code, so it's their problem. ;)

So the solution for the rest of us is to write a better implementation that removes the need to deal with the bizarre problems of the proprietary one. Worked for gcc, Linux, and a bunch of other things. It will work again, it just takes a bit of time to get done, like any good thing.

cheers,
dalibor topic