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Let Java Go
Eric S. Raymond wrote this open
letter to Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun. The response from Sun can be
found in this PCPro
article, leading to a follow-up
letter from ESR. "We don't presume to dictate Sun's
strategy. But what we do require of anyone before we will accept them as a
"friend of the open-source community" is more honesty than this. Sun should
be nervous about the consequences of allowing its spokespeople to indulge
in flames, spin, and prevarication when there are serious issues on the
table. Because an attempt to shoot the messenger won't make those issues go
away; indeed, it makes some of them worse."
(Log in to post comments)
A confusing company Posted Feb 19, 2004 22:48 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] Sun is one of those confusing companies (at least for me). On one hand, they make huge contributions like OpenOffice, Tomcat etc. On the other, they are giving out statements that simply don't make sense. Like "no Linux server strategy" all the while they are advertising Red Hat and other distros for their servers on the web site.In the case of Java they are probably overly careful, given the fiasco with Microsoft's attempt of hijacking the technology. My guess is they want to make sure nothing like that happens ever again. On the other hand, they could do that even if Java was open source, especially if it were placed under GPL/LGPL licence. A good certification program would make sure everything's in order before you can call the thing Java anything. Or maybe they are worried that they won't be as visible as inventors and keepers if Java goes open source. They aren't making money on Java directly, but it's great from the image perspective. Who knows. As I said, confusing... Does anyone have any better info on this whole thing? What is the real reason(s) for not open sourcing Java?
A confusing company Posted Feb 19, 2004 23:07 UTC (Thu) by pyellman (guest, #4997) [Link] There should be no reason for confusion regarding Sun's reasons for not open sourcing Java: they (Sun) still believe quite deeply that they will ultimately be able to monetize the significant mind share, market share, and developer share that has grown up around the Java programming language. Actually, Sun believes that it is in the position of NEEDING to monetize Java, as a littany of investment and market analysts have berated them for faiing to do so. With Sun's server business in serious jeopardy, many believe that Java is Sun's only high card.Unfortunately, however, monetizing a programming language is a difficult if not impossible proposition. In my opinion, a language is either growing or dying, and I agree with ESR: the continued growth of the use of Java as a programming language is in jeopardy unless Sun changes course. The range of alternatives to Java continues to grow, not shrink. It would be nice if Sun could come out and state openly their recognition of the obvious: the computing industry is at an inflection point -- going forward, the recipe for success for companies like Sun will be in providing real, direct benefits to real customers (as it is in many other sectors). As much as Sun hates to recognize it, this does mean providing services. Perhaps they could find ways to apply their Java expertise there. But strangling Java in the hopes of someday cashing in big is just a pipe dream. Peter Yellman
A confusing company Posted Feb 19, 2004 23:34 UTC (Thu) by rriggs (subscriber, #11598) [Link] Sun is in an impossible position right now. They cannot win with their Java strategy. The analysts expect them to make some dough off of Java, and they know they can't do that (for reasons the parent post eloquently describes). But giving up Java to the OSS community would be admitting that to the analysts, which they are not ready to do yet either. They know what the stock charts will look like after such an admission.The only way this will work is if the analysts all get a clue, and collectively realize that Sun can never profitably monetize Java. Maybe that's where Eric needs to start weilding the clue-stick...
A confusing company Posted Feb 19, 2004 23:46 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] I hereby nominate 'monetize' as a contender for the Word Most Worthy Of Being Erased From The English Language. It's just too close to 'monopolize'--too similar in usage as well as sound.If the analysts got a real clue, certainly they would realize that if Sun released Java from its proprietary shackles, the stock would go *up*, not down. Being the benefactor gets you a lot of good will, and good will generates customers, if you don't waste it. I don't think Sun really fathoms the way Free Software works, and they don't realize how much of a Good Thing letting their baby grow up would be. They just need to look at the long term, not the quarterly myopia of the analysts.
Your could easily replace it with a shorter word Posted Feb 20, 2004 2:34 UTC (Fri) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494) [Link] I hereby nominate 'monetize' as a contender for the Word Most Worthy Of Being Erased From The English Language. Agree. Just replace it with that short, pity word derived from the old German for "to strike".
A confusing company Posted Feb 20, 2004 15:06 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] Right on!As far as I'm concerned, "money" no longer means "medium of trade." I think it now means "medium of greed." I could work my behind off for the rest of my life, and wind up barely making enough to handle one big emergency, work a reasonable day's work and wind up with barely enough to live day-to-day. The people who are engaging in this long "litany" arrange things nicely for themselves; that is, work really hard for a couple of years, and then lord it over the rest of us for the rest of their (and their children's and grand-children's and great-grand-children's (ad nauseam) lives. On the other hand, I don't have anything against money as a tool for trade, and if Sun wants to make money on Java, so be it. I just wish there were a way to have that happen without all this extra baloney. I think I'll believe we've gotten somewhere when news.com actually starts writing news, instead of investment news with a technical veneer.
A confusing company Posted Feb 20, 2004 17:33 UTC (Fri) by davecb (subscriber, #1574) [Link] Whereas I consider they're trying to avoid MSstealing their efforts: remember the big lawsuit over MS's attempt to Embrace and Extend (and therefor monopolize) Java?
A confusing company Posted Feb 26, 2004 1:03 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] > Whereas I consider they're trying to avoid MS stealing their effortsThat doesn't wash. The path to releasing as free software and preventing others from "stealing your efforts" is clear, and has vast precedent: release under a strong copyleft like the GNU GPL. That Sun don't do this, reveals that their concern is not "avoid [someone] stealing their efforts", but something else.
A confusing company Posted Feb 23, 2004 5:55 UTC (Mon) by Eudyptes (guest, #15589) [Link] In most case I seriously think Sun is "playing to the crowd". In thiscase that would be Wall Street. They want their cake and eat it too would sum up their position. They benefit greatly from FOSS and don't be fooled, OpenOffice is being used in the same manner that Mozilla was for Netscape - And I believe that to some degree OO will have the same effect for Sun Office. Mozilla became "the project" and supplanted Netscape. Now we have a situation wherein Java was on the road to being what Sun wanted it to be and M$ tried to highjack it. Typical of the dot-com boom everyone road the wave [and then almost drown in it]. Java could be much more than it is but Sun keeps fiddling with it - recall about a year ago when Sun decided to "change the rules" and almost had a mass exodus from their developers community. In this case someone is shooting off their mouth for the sole purpose of saying what they believe someone "expects" them to. Why? well... "Mr. Phipps objects to my having responded to remarks Scott McNealy made to analysts as though they had been addressed to the open-source community. I deduce from his objection that Mr. Phipps thinks his boss has a right to tell conflicting stories to different audiences without being called on it. I suppose it is possible that analysts accept being handed spin and fabulations, but we in the open-source community do not." In essence, and forgive the vulgarity, Mr. Phipps, and perhaps Mr McNealy, is pimping himself to whatever particular audience he's facing at the moment. This is classic old style corporate behavior. It's about the two Wall Street paradigms - Greed and Fear. Pair that with the desire to "extend" their "market channels" and I for one am not surprised at this behavior at all. Consider this as well. Why does Sun hate M$ so much? We all know the obvious reasons... But could it also be because on an upper white collar level they're so much alike? Hmmmm!
Who Needs 'Em? Posted Feb 19, 2004 22:52 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] The Open Source world (or, anyway, the Open Source Initiative, or maybe just ESR) is in pretty sad shape when it finds itself pleading with some rapacious corporation to free a badly-designed language created, in the first place, just to attack some other even-more rapacious corporation. Sun is free, and welcome, to make itself irrelevant to Free Software, and the world at large. It would already be forgotten if not for its multi-billion dollar bank account, which (incidentally) feeds OpenOffice and SCO alike. Java itself is already irrelevant to Free Software: Java needs Free Software, but Free Software doesn't need Java. As Sun fades from our minds, so will Java, and good riddance.It makes me feel better to think that Free Software is not in similarly sad shape. Then I look at the Mono and dotGNU projects. They're not begging anybody, exactly. One might say, rather, that they're asking for it. I'm not sure which is worse. I guess this is what the mainstream is like: fools make themselves irrelevant, the rest of us (or "them", maybe) go about our business, and it all comes out OK, because we're not in the middle of an apocalyptic struggle any more.
Who Needs 'Em? Posted Feb 20, 2004 17:05 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] The reason that Free Software (and Open Source) "need" Java is because it's what every new programmer learns in high school or university. CS1 and/or CS2 are entirely Java most places. Java is the language undergrads, especially of state or community colleges, come out feeling most comfortable with. By not having a free Java implementation (and between Sun's licenses and the complexity of the task, being near-impossible to make one), both movements are missing out on an enormous potential pool of developers.Java would already have been forgotten save for its huge bank account, I agree. But the real point here is that Java wasn't forgotten, and it still has that bank account. New people are learning it, and things are being written in it, because of that.
Who Needs 'Em? Posted Feb 20, 2004 19:11 UTC (Fri) by ordonnateur (subscriber, #6652) [Link] I've taught Java to CS1 students. The really outstanding students already know a few languages, not to mention Linux and other software libre (some even write it), long before they start the course. The good students go on to learn better languages in the second and third year and even the mediocre will have learnt enough C to get pass the degree. The worst will never be programmers, unfortunately they are the ones most likely to become managers and 'consultants' at the first opportunity.
Who Needs 'Em? Posted Feb 20, 2004 19:25 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] People would have said the same about Pascal, 20 years ago. Who uses Pascal, or even any variant of Pascal, any more? Not even cranks. But back then, Pascal was the future of computing. The Xerox Star was (re-)coded in Pascal, and so was Apple's Lisa.Free Software is better off without the distraction of Java. Nothing Java offers -- or even claims to offer, but fails to deliver -- holds value for Free Software. The whole "virtual machine" milieu -- bytecodes, JIT compilers, WORA -- is irrelevant to the needs of Free Software developers and users, and has served as an expensive and distracting detour. The proof is that Free Software written in Java is only used by people already obliged to use Java. Programs written in Java but not for Java programmers languish, ignored, and few GNU/Linux or BSD machines even have a JVM installed. Students were the last people still using Pascal after the world moved on. Students probably will be the last still using Java, in a few years.
Who Needs 'Em? Posted Feb 20, 2004 23:08 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] Your opinion is not shared by many developers. A free Java (GCJ + Classpath) is perhaps the GNU project's largest development effort right now. The lack of a complete free JVM was a common answer to a "What should be in Debian, but isn't?" question on the Debian mailing lists recently. When RMS is asked what is missing in the GNU system, his first answer is usually a complete Java system.> The whole "virtual machine" milieu -- bytecodes, JIT compilers, WORA -- is irrelevant to the needs of Free Software developers and users... Even though modern efforts in free languages are all in the same direction -- Python and Perl are both VM-based, Parrot is attracting many developers, Psyco (a Python JIT compiler) has had great success recently, and one of Ruby 2.0's most anticipated features is a VM. No, Java doesn't affect you much if you're writing kernel code or shell utilities. But at a high level, there's a lot of free software written in Java that can't run on free systems, and a lot of people that would rather write applications in Java. iRATE for example, is a very popular free software program written in Java. Eclipse is attracting an awful lot of developers. I agree with you in that all ways, Java is a substandard language and we'd be better off without it. But we can't go back 10 years and fix that. To write it off as "irrelevant" is stupid. > People would have said the same about Pascal, 20 years ago. Who uses Pascal, or even any variant of Pascal, any more? Enough people that there are several free implementations of Pascal, not to mention all the developers using proprietary products like Delphi/Kylix.
Let Java Go Posted Feb 19, 2004 22:56 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] Although I emotionally agree with a lot of Eric's points, he's not particularly winning friends either. His swaggering, confrontational style makes it very difficult for anyone at Sun to respond diplomatically. Also, he apparently didn't dig too deeply when asserting that no one packages a Sun Java VM--Gentoo has had it available in both source and binary form (it runs really nice when custom-compiled!), and Slackware has had it as a binary package for a while now. (And yes, it does work as a browser plugin and also the full JDK.)I'm not defending Sun's actions as a company--they do indeed seem to be trying to placate those in the Free/Open camp while maintaining strangleholds in key places. They will be playing the unenviable part of Saruman pretty soon if they keep this up. I just wish Eric would let somebody with less of a combative tendency have some influence on his writing before he sends it out.
Let Java Go Posted Feb 20, 2004 0:35 UTC (Fri) by kunitz (guest, #3965) [Link] As far as I can remember, Gentoo installs the binaries -- it doesn'tcompile the VM. VMWare is distributed as binary too. Sun's license gives you the right to distribute the JRE and J2SDK for the single purpose to redistribute it with other software which needs the J2SDK. However you must give information about the SDK on the media label! And you can't distribute another VM or SDK from another source with it! IANAL but I believe that Gentoo is technically violating the license, because they distribute gcj too. Sun has every right to keep Java as proprietary as it wants. However it could start with following free software friendly moves. 1) Modify the license in a way, that free distribution of the J2SE JRE and SDK together with gcj or kaffe! 2) Remove the media label requirement in a way that is compatible with normal package distribution! The other thing is, that Sun tries to "Windowsize" Java. Basically the definition of the Java standard is Sun's implementation of Java. Every two years Sun has a new major release of the standard edition with new language features and tons of new APIs. Java is currently documented in a feature by feature mode -- there is currently no comprehensive, single document about the Java language as supported by the 1.5 beta. The 1.5 beta documentation still links to the Java language specification from year 2000. So from my perspective another free software friendly move of Sun could be: 3) Update the existing documentation about the Java language, Java VM, Java Native Interface (JNI) to reflect the changes of 1.5 that matches the quality of other IT vendors (intel). Add another document about the new JVM Tool interface. I believe that there is still plenty of room for more free software friendly steps before Sun publishes the J2SE SDK under the GPL. I hope that there are smart people at Sun Microsystems, who are calculating the risks and benefits of differentiating the product in a free software and an advanced enterprise edition of the J2SE SDK having all the newest garbage collectors and JIT optimizations in it. The advanced enterprise edition could even create a new revenue stream for Sun. And that would certainly be not a bad thing.
j2sdk from sources on gentoo Posted Feb 20, 2004 1:48 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] This is my reference for my assertion about Gentoo building the VM from source: http://packages.gentoo.org/ebuilds/?sun-j2sdk-1.4.1 The description reads: "Sun's J2SE Development Kit, version 1.4.2 (From sources)". The version number seems to be mismatched, of course, but there it is.
j2sdk from sources on gentoo Posted Feb 20, 2004 8:18 UTC (Fri) by kunitz (guest, #3965) [Link] Thank you for the link. Gentoo seems to have acquireda community source license and compiles the j2sdk on its own, however distributed are only binaries, I checked this on two Gentoo mirrors. The license is given on the page of your link -- it forbids a redistribution of the source. However the redistribution of executable code is allowed for "research" use without any further restrictions.
Let Java Go Posted Feb 20, 2004 17:08 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] Gentoo is treading a thin line if it does this. Sun's licenses prevent people from treading on certain areas of the Java standard API namespace, which free implementations obviously have to do to implement the whole API.
Just the Java J2ME,J2SE,J2EE Libraries Posted Feb 19, 2004 23:08 UTC (Thu) by NZheretic (guest, #409) [Link] First posted to in reply to Russ Miles Sun and Open Sourcing, the debate continues...It would benefit the entire Java based industy, including the free software, open source and proprietary based vendors, to open license the core J2ME,J2SE,J2EE libaries and Java to bytecode compilers. Java's primary strength, the ability to write code which is constantly portable across many vendors platforms, would be greatly enhanced if all of vendors were using the same core libaries. To insure that the standard base core would not become polluted with incompatable forks, the source could be licensed with a clause requiring any incompatable changes or any additional classes or methords to be moved to and occupy only the vendors namespace. Another clause would require that the vendor version of Java bytecode compiler and any GUI IDE defaults to generating portable bytecode, without embedding any vendor specific references. Contributions to the core standard would be required to licensed under the same open source license. The existing JCP standard body could decide what becomes part of the Open Java Core. It should not be necessary to open source license Sun's JVMs. In the long run it could greatly benefit Sun to develop the JVM under a dual license as it doing with OpenOffice.org and selling StarOffice.
Just the Java J2ME,J2SE,J2EE Libraries Posted Feb 20, 2004 23:19 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] > To insure that the standard base core would not become polluted with incompatable forks, the source could be licensed with a clause requiring any incompatable changes or any additional classes or methords to be moved to and occupy only the vendors namespace.This is not a free software, or open source, license. In fact, that's pretty much what Sun's license for some of Java says already.
Just the Java J2ME,J2SE,J2EE Libraries Posted Feb 21, 2004 10:16 UTC (Sat) by NZheretic (guest, #409) [Link] In fact, that's pretty much what Sun's license for some of Java says already..The current set of Sun Java source licenses is not by any means an open source license. It is more along the line of the old AT&T Unix and Microsoft shared source licenses.
Just the Java J2ME,J2SE,J2EE Libraries Posted Feb 21, 2004 19:29 UTC (Sat) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] > The current set of Sun Java source licenses is not by any means an open source license.Correct! Neither is the license you proposed, preventing people from changing the library behavior inside certain namespaces. That is one of the main reasons that Sun's current Java implementation is not open source or free.
Such a license would still be classed as an open source license. Posted Feb 22, 2004 3:09 UTC (Sun) by NZheretic (guest, #409) [Link] To insure that the standard base core would not become polluted with incompatable forks, the source could be licensed with a clause requiring any incompatable changes or any additional classes or methords to be moved to and occupy only the vendors namespace. Another clause would require that the vendor version of Java bytecode compiler and any GUI IDE defaults to generating portable bytecode, without embedding any vendor specific references.What part of the above would conflict with the definition of an open source license? In fact clause 5 explicitly states: "The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software."
Such a license would still be classed as an open source license. Posted Feb 22, 2004 5:24 UTC (Sun) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] A name or version, which is exposed to humans, is not the same as a library interface, which is a technical consideration. Debian, for example, has explicitly rejected such licenses as non-free (following the DFSG, upon which the OSD is based). The requirement in the LaTeX license to require one to change the filename of any modified file was rejected as non-free. I suspect a similar requirement in any other language would be rejected as such.
Some points Posted Feb 22, 2004 13:56 UTC (Sun) by NZheretic (guest, #409) [Link] 1) I stated from the start that it would be an Open source license and nothing in the clause would necessarily be in breach of the actual offical definition of the Open Source Initiative (OSI)'s Open Source Definition.2) Changes would only be required to shift to the vendors/developers namespace if the changes were incompatable with the JCP JSR open standards. This would not prevent additional optimizations, ports or bug fixes. Since adoption of standards has for a long time been an opens source tradition, it wpuld not be much of an imposition. 3) Shifting "unoffically" extended or modifed incompatable standard classes to the vendors/developers namespace is not a major limiatation. It is possible to add a custom class loader/converter and/or modify the Java to bytecode compiler ( requiring an addional flag ) to re-reference/re-map existing standard API calls to the vendors/developers namespaced classes. 4) On case in precedence where a change of name affected the API for free license source code is the Elba fork of the LGPL'ed JBoss. JBoss Group LLC owns the "JBOSS" trademark and the jboss identifer is used thoughout the JBoss implementation. The Core Developer Network LLC member replaced all instances of "jboss" with "elba" in the source code and could have added a modified class loader ( the Jboss project now includes a custom class loader ) without any loss of functionality.( All of the lead Geronimo developers had worked on Elba and Marc Fleury sent the Apache project a warning letter about possible derivative lines of source from JBoss/Elba released under the Apache license instead of the LGPL ) 5) Sun already,under the JCP organization, licenses the use of J2EE Certification to open source developent organizations on the grounds that the organization's product passes the relevent test suite. The LGPL'ed JBoss JBoss Group commits to J2EE Certification for JBoss Application Server. 6) Although the Debian DFSG and the Debian legal mailing list are influential, they do not hold a monopoly on what is or is not either a free license or an opens source license. In fact many of the members take issue on section 2c of the GPL license, claiming it violates the the terms of the Debian DFSG. 7) The LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL) issue was more a case of the wording of the clauses and the ambiguity of what would constitute an incompatable change. This would not be a problem in the case of a Java Open core because of the availability of the test suites used for Certification of the Java standards.
Let Java Go. And please support the free alternatives! Posted Feb 20, 2004 0:05 UTC (Fri) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link] If someone wants to help the Free Software efforts that would make this whole discussion irrelevant to begin with, please come to FOSDEM this weekend.We (GNU Classpath hackers Sascha Brawer and Mark Wielaard, gcj hackers Tom Tromey, Andrew Haley and Michael Koch, Kaffe hackers Jim Pick, Dalibor Topic and Stephane Meslin-Weber, Debian hacker Arnaud Vandyck, SableVM hacker Grzegorz Prokopski, Wonka hacker Chris Gray, Jaos hacker Patrik Reali, IKVM hacker Jeroen Frijters and lots of other hackers such as Dries Buytaert, Ingo Prötel, Daniel Veillard, ...) have decided to use the FOSDEM Free java developer room to cooperate more on truely free alternatives to the java platform. Please join us and see how you can help, or just follow some of the presentations that show you don't need proprietary java anymore to use and develop java-gnome with eclipse, or server applications like tomcat and JBoss or just lots and lots of other free software written in the java programming language on free runtimes!
And it would have been different... Posted Feb 20, 2004 2:32 UTC (Fri) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494) [Link] He has taken quotes given by Scott McNealy to analysts and attacked them as if they were spoken to the Open Source community. ...if he'd made those statements to the CEO of the Open Source community. But I, like Scott, am having trouble finding an office address for this worthy person, whoever they are. OK, </sarcasm> and all... any statement Scott makes which is likely to get published is a statement to the Open Source community because they are the public. Despite having made some seriously significant contributions to Open Source (buying StarDivision and Opening OpenOffice springs to mind) Sun obviously want to have their cake and eat it too, and she ain't gunner work.
Sun's contributions Posted Feb 20, 2004 16:07 UTC (Fri) by hazelsct (subscriber, #3659) [Link] I could be wrong, but hasn't Sun contributed quite a bit to GNOME -- contrary to Eric's allegations of their role merely as user and propagator? IIRC, they both have lots of engineers devoted to a11y, and also pumped lots of cash into Ximian (well, lots relative to the size of Ximian anyway) to help GNOME 2 reach maturity rapidly.The point being that fully acknowledging their contributions -- or rather, not denying the ones they have made -- would go a long way toward "winning friends and influencing people" at Sun.
Sun's contributions Posted Feb 26, 2004 10:55 UTC (Thu) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link] One should also not forget the contribution of Sun to open source software with Staroffice and Gridengine!
Let Java Go Posted Feb 20, 2004 19:23 UTC (Fri) by scripter (subscriber, #2654) [Link] The comments above contain many good ideas. I hope someone at Sun is reading them.Although Eric Raymond may have gone about his request to open Java in a less diplomatic way than many would have liked, it at least raises the issue in many people's minds. And through indirect influences, Sun will likely consider making Java more redistributable than it is now. I personally like the idea of Sun dual-licensing the core libraries: a commercial license and a pure-GPL license. This model seems to have worked well for MySQL, Sleepycat Berkley DB, and Trolltech's QT.
Let Java Go--already! Posted Feb 26, 2004 10:59 UTC (Thu) by a_hippie (subscriber, #34) [Link] I read Eric's rant and I thought it came off less than Eric's usual perfection. I thinkGanesh Prasad's article was far better. As as another poster already commented, "I hope Sun is reading this", I agree! http://linuxtoday.com/developer/2004022402326OPCYDV Wishing you well.
Better, but still confused Posted Feb 26, 2004 17:29 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] This is a reply to Ganesh Prasad's article.First, Sun is not interested in sharing success with Free Software, even if not sharing might mean failure. All the value Sun sees in Java lies in its possible use to stab its perceived competitors in the back at any future moment; to give that up would be to eliminate all its value, because there is no monetary value. As we will see, it wouldn't matter if they were willing, but it degrades Free Software to be seen begging for scraps when it is, in fact, in the position of strength in the real world outside of the Java fence. Second, Free Software would not benefit from any influx of Java usage; it is to our credit that Java usage is substantially confined to those already obliged to use it, and that JVMs are only very spottily deployed on Linux and BSD hosts. Java's design is meant to solve problems that Free Software just doesn't have, and its means of solving those problems actually interferes with solving the problems we do have. Every problem solved without Java is to our credit, and every problem solved with it creates further problems. Third, any merit that might be found in Java inheres necessarily to a greater degree in C#, which is already substantially Free (as an ECMA standard) and which corrects many (but not most) of Java's fundamental design flaws. While C# has the same fundamental problems alluded to in the second point above, it certainly bypasses the legal and proprietary problems Sun has imposed, even though it still reserves a rapacious corporation's ability to stab Free Software in the back at any opportune future moment. Therefore, if Java were the answer to anything, C# would be a better answer, and any attention devoted to begging Sun for Java bones would be better spent on implementing the ECMA C# standard. In any case, that would be pointless, because Free Software doesn't need Java or C#. Their only value is to the proprietary software industry. Any Free Software attention to them has value only insofar as it helps lead proprietary software users over the fence to freedom.
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