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When Sun finally DOES open source Java, it'll likely be to late.When Sun finally DOES open source Java, it'll likely be to late.Posted May 20, 2004 21:43 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599)In reply to: When Sun finally DOES open source Java, it'll likely be to late. by Duncan Parent article: JBoss CEO Opposes Open-Source Java (CRN)
> [V]ery real concerns about keeping Java portable.
As mentioned recently in discussion following a C#/Mono story, Open Source doesn't need to worry about "portable", because open source is /by/ /definition/ portable. I may have misunderstood either what he said or what you wrote (or both!), but it appears to me that he's talking about Java-the-language and you're talking about Java-the-VM. Certainly an open-sourced JVM is fairly portable (although I think you understate it considerably by referring only to word-size issues--threading models have traditionally been a much bigger headache, IIRC), but if different flavors of that JVM start diverging, then how portable is the Java code that's supposed to run on top of it? That said, I'm fully aware (as is, no doubt, Herr CEO) that there are already a number of JVMs, so it's hard to see where things would be massively worse if Sun's were open-sourced. That is, there's already divergence, and one could certainly argue that, to the extent the divergence stems from actual bugs, having more open source can only help (i.e., they'd get fixed more quickly by those who have been bitten by them and who therefore have a vested interest in doing so). So overall, I tend to side with you on the matter... Greg
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