Announcements from JavaOne [LWN.net]

JavaOne, Sun's annual Java conference, is in full swing in San Francisco. "Open Source" seems to be the buzz word of the day in these press releases:

JBoss and Novell have announced a strategic alliance to enable Novell(R) exteNd(TM) customers to deploy SOA-based applications to the open source JBoss Application Server.
Gluecode Software has announced the general availability of Gluecode Portal Server 3.5, the latest version of Gluecode's open source enterprise portal.
Gluecode Software contributes to the Apache Portals Project.
Agilent Technologies and Sun Microsystems have announced the formation of the Java Distributed Data Acquisition and Control (JDDAC) java.net community, an open-source forum for the development of Java applications and libraries for wide-area distributed sensors and controls.
ObjectWeb has announced that its corporate members are now targeting the delivery of ESB solutions built on open-source components.
JBoss has announced JBossLabs(TM), a research and development center focused on delivering innovative middleware technologies to the market.
JBoss has announced JBoss Inside, a new offering for companies integrating JBoss technology into their products.
JBoss and Sleepycat Software have announced a developer version of JBossCache(TM) integrated with Berkeley DB Java Edition.
Sun Microsystems has announced the release of version 4.0 of the NetBeans project.
Sun Microsystems has announced that Allied Irish Bank will migrate 7,500 desktop users and transition branch dependent applications across its entire branch network to the Sun Java(TM) Desktop System.

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JavaOne.. One announcement missing, the open sourcing of Java. When?

Posted Jun 30, 2004 12:29 UTC (Wed) by Ender (guest, #22698) [Link]

Come on guy, would you just drop it? Where's your proof that OSing java would make it come back to life? Where's your proof that java NEEDS to come back to like? Where are all these stats from where you get your boundless information? Or did you just happen to hear this somewhere and jump on the 'Open Source java now' train?

Let Sun worry about their own freaking business. Unless you are an actual share holder (i doubt it) why the hell should you care what they do? or if they go under?

Use the best tool for the job.

JavaOne.. One announcement missing, the open sourcing of Java. When?

Posted Jun 30, 2004 14:13 UTC (Wed) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

Freeing Java wouldn't help. Most of its design features are irrelevant to Free Software. As a language, it's a ridiculous hodgepodge of miscast features lifted from other languages and subtly altered to work poorly.
C# is little better. Free Software doesn't need either language.

JavaOne.. One announcement missing, the open sourcing of Java. When?

Posted Jun 30, 2004 14:43 UTC (Wed) by Ender (guest, #22698) [Link]

heh...thats even funnier then the orginal poster. What language would you recommend EVERYONE use? I'm not saying Java is the end all be all, but take a look sometime on sourceforge or freshmeat, How many projects are done in Java? Just about the same if not more then the 'free' languages.

Then stroll over to java.net to find a few more. And to top off the cake you might want to check out the jakarta project over at apache. Right, no java needed there.

Its funny that a lot of free software that is written in Java doesn't actually need the language. How's that work again?

Again, my point is that Java doesn't solve all the problems in the world, but its a damn popular tool to use. Just because you see no use for it doesn't mean its useless...really...you gotta believe me on this one.

JavaOne.. One announcement missing, the open sourcing of Java. When?

Posted Jun 30, 2004 19:36 UTC (Wed) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

It's simple. Free Software projects written in Java are used only by people who are writing Java, or who are already using Java for something else. Have any Java programs escaped the niche? You would know, because you always have to know, when it's a Java program.

Free Software doesn't need Java because we have better solutions that are not encumbered with Sun's strategic competitive apparatus. When Sun hits the wall and starts enforcing its JVM patents, Java projects will hurt. Then, watch Microsoft show its true colors and start enforcing its own CLR patents that the JVMs are (also) stepping on.

Free Software not only doesn't need Java, it is better off staying miles away from Java or anything like it. Fortunately most people seem to realize this, which is why nobody tries to develop non-Java-developer tools in Java. The uptake just isn't there. Besides the legal risks, JVMs just don't work anywhere near so well as advertised -- each has unique bugs and incompatibilities, and the garbage-collected memory footprint somehow always manages to eat the whole machine.

JavaOne.. One announcement missing, the open sourcing of Java. When?

Posted Jul 1, 2004 4:32 UTC (Thu) by dmaxwell (guest, #14010) [Link]

I don't see how opensourcing Java is the end-all and be-all. I believe it would be a better idea for the whole "Java Community Process" to go away and for Java to become a full ECMA standard. The problem with Java is that Sun defines the standard and absolutely controls the reference implementation and classes. They spring both the new standards and fully developed JRE/JDKs on us simultaneously. This condemns any other VM to endless taillight chasing.

The classes are actually the REAL problem. Coming up with reasonable VMs and JIT compilers for Java is the easy part if the number of implementations is any indicator. The hard part is that every non-trivial app relies on an extremely large body of external classes. It's as though gcc, glibc, xlibs, openGL, and sdl would all have to be replicated perfectly to get real-world apps to run on a third-party vm.

If Sun were to open source Java itself but retain control of the classes, it would have almost no effect. It may be a better idea to find more contributors to the GNU Classpath project.