| |||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||
Better late than neverBetter late than neverPosted Aug 17, 2006 8:28 UTC (Thu) by dion (subscriber, #2764)Parent article: Coming soon: a free Java
I've always wondered why Sun refused to opensource java, I mean if time has shown one thing then it's that opensourcing something will go a long way towards ensuring that people will trust it enough to use it.
Just look at KDE, before Qt was officially Stallman-compliant a lot of people didn't trust it enough to use it and some even started a competing project.
The same thing happened with Java, some people didn't trust it and they went ahead and wrote their own incompatible replacement which they could have more control over.
Now, given that Gnome havn't given up although their reason for starting is gone, I think it's safe to say that .Net (and mono) will not go away either.
(Log in to post comments)
Sun is simply coat-tailing Posted Aug 17, 2006 11:16 UTC (Thu) by fredrik (subscriber, #232) [Link] My interpretation of Sun's real motivation not to open source java until now is the historic scepticism agains anything open source. Not from any technical perspecive, but from managers in big business organisations.
Move five or so years back in time, and anything labeled open source was still strugling with a credibility issue - again not for technical reasons, but for marketing and business aspects - among business management. At that thime there almost wasn't a single issue of lwn without the word FUD in it, remember? So, to get all those conserverative proprietary software development organisations on the Java train Sun argued that Java was credible because it was controlled by a standards friendly but strict managed and business aware corporation. Actually this argument has been made up until this spring if I remember correctly.
Anyway, over the last couple of years, this general open source scepticism has mostly vanished and instead the open source label provides credibility even among some of those previously so sceptical pointy haired bosses. Big blue, intel, motorola, nokia - you name it and it sure has a open source strategy, maybe not a public one, but it's there...
So, if you like, you could simply call Sun opportunists. When the wind blew against open source, they assured their customers that Sun would never allow Java to be "spoiled" that way. Now when the wind has turned, so has Sun's argument.
Admittedly, I have no hard proof for the above argument. Besides, Java is still a tool I use with pleasure every day at work, and even if I am right and Sun's motivations to some extent are murky, I still applaud the end result.
Fredrik Jonson
Sun is simply coat-tailing Posted Aug 17, 2006 15:44 UTC (Thu) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link] > My interpretation of Sun's real motivation not to open source java> until now is the historic scepticism agains anything open source. Not > from any technical perspecive, but from managers in big business > organisations.
Remember who bought Staroffice and released it under the LGPL?
So maybe not releasing Java was intended to protect Sun's crown jewels?
Sun is simply coat-tailing Posted Aug 17, 2006 20:12 UTC (Thu) by fredrik (subscriber, #232) [Link] I'm not claiming that it was Sun that was skeptical against open source. Rather I'm arguing that Sun's problem was that they had to convince the more conservative parts of the business software organisations that Java would continue to be a serious endevour, credible enough to be a widely accepted programming environment. As opposed to some kind of akvard social experiment - which is how I believe top management in many business software organisations still perceived anything associated with open source only a couple of years ago.
Of course a lot has happened since then. Sun's experience with Openoffice.org could very well be one factor. The serious interest large business organisations has shown the Apache Harmony project could be another.
Basically, I think it was a matter of being confident that no big player was going to jump ship when Sun changed course.
Fredrik Jonson
Sun is simply coat-tailing Posted Aug 18, 2006 14:38 UTC (Fri) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link] Yeah, well, it's not the first time Sun suffers from split personality.
Better late than never Posted Aug 17, 2006 11:21 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link] I've always been very clear, and somewhat sympathetic. Sun wanted to make sure that no-one (OK, MS) was able to hijack the language: embrace, extend (preferably with patent-encumbered closed stuff) and extinguish. MS did try. Sun went to court, and won.
They now think that Java is sufficiently well-established that programmers would avoid anything that attempted to introduce incompatibilities. I hope they are right.
Elsewhere, look at what MS has done with Kerberos. IMO they also tried to hijack HTML, but there they arrived too late to do anything much worse than to make IE the non-standard and bugridden mess you know and hate. Even so, there are still some sites out thre that won't work right if you don't use IE to access them. Less each year, probably thanks to Firefox.
Better late than never Posted Aug 17, 2006 14:12 UTC (Thu) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link] It would be fair to point out that the Netscape browser of the time *also* implemented a non-standard, buggy version of HTML.
Better late than never Posted Aug 17, 2006 15:36 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] ...which is why they shouldn't be wasting their energy on crap like"CDDL" and instead should have just adopted a license like the GPL. The GPL strongly defends against the triple E's.
so they "won", did they? Posted Aug 17, 2006 17:03 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Microsoft responded by creating an alternative Java called C# and an alternative byte-coded virtual machine framework called .NET, rendering Sun's control of Java meaningless, and there's a free implementation called Mono that runs on Linux and Solaris. Now Sun has to make Java free to stop Mono from taking over Linux/Unix/BSD land (at least, taking over that portion of *nix land that finds the Java model attractive).
Microsoft hijacking HTML Posted Aug 17, 2006 23:35 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Microsoft failed to hijack HTML? That's the first I've heard of that opinion. In my view, IE is the standard. It's the only standard worth recognizing for a browser: the standard to which websites are designed. I used to use IE a lot (not so much since I installed Firefox on my Windows system and found it 99% IE-compatible), and I didn't hate it for being bugridden; it always seems to work for me. The only thing I hate about IE is its lack of function.
Microsoft hijacking HTML Posted Aug 24, 2006 13:19 UTC (Thu) by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624) [Link] I thought it was very successful in its main area of functionality, thatof introducing viruses, spyware, adware, trojans and various other bits of badness to those unfortunate enough to have to use Windows.. ?
|
|
||||||||||||