Bottom line

Bottom line

Posted Nov 14, 2006 23:02 UTC (Tue) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203)
Parent article: Sun releases Java under GPLv2

The bottom line seems to be thus:

This is indeed a pigs flying level event. an almost unprecedented reversal of Sun's position. But as a practical matter it won't make much difference until at least next year, probably second half.

So lets look where that puts things in terms of deployment. FC7 is probably out so make it FC8. RHEL5 is out, so RHEL6 would be the earliest for the RH side of the commercial world, but then they already get the IBM version on their Extras CD. Debian will still have the Free (as in beer) version they adopted (to a fair amount of controversy) earlier but this Free version certainly won't make it into Etch. Don't follow SuSE's release schedule but you can bet it will be at least one major release before they can add it.

Bottom line is it is a great portent for the future but the full impact probably won't be felt before 2008 at the earliest.

The big unanswered question is just what impact will this have? Something this big is almost certain to HAVE an impact, but where? Will we see major new components being developed in Java? Will GNOME dump mono and start rewriting the major components, like has been threatened for years? Or will a whole new project spring up?

And after reading the Sun FAQ it is clear we won't be calling it Java so what will it's Free name be? Sigh.... IceWeasel all over again.

---

(Log in to post comments)