Sun to give away Java Enterprise System [LWN.net]

Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced the free availability of its Java Enterprise System, it plans to release the code as open-source software in the near future. "Sun is making the Java(TM) Enterprise System, Sun N1(TM) Management software and Sun developer tools available at no cost for both development and deployment and further, is reaffirming its commitment to open source this software. Second, Sun is announcing that it is integrating all of this software along with the Solaris OS into the Solaris Enterprise System, the only comprehensive and open infrastructure software platform available today."

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Sun to give away Java Enterprise System

Posted Dec 1, 2005 22:14 UTC (Thu) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (5 responses)

Hmm, they don't actually seem to say that the JES will be open source. They say "available at no cost" and then they say that they're "reaffirming their commitment" to make it open source. In other words, maybe, someday, perhaps.

Given Sun's remarkably silly foot-dragging when it comes to open-sourcing Java itself, I'm going to take a wait-and-see on this.

The final comment about "the only comprehensive and open infrastructure software platform available today" also strikes me as remarkably silly. Comprehensive in the sense that it provides everything that <em>Sun</em> thinks is important? :)

Sun to give away Java Enterprise System

Posted Dec 2, 2005 16:29 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (4 responses)

They'll probably release it under their own "Open Source" license, like Solaris. I.e., don't hold your breath, and don't expect it will be of any use when they finally do.

Sun to give away Java Enterprise System

Posted Dec 3, 2005 22:42 UTC (Sat) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104) [Link]

Whether you like the CDDL or not, it is an open source license.

I was also initially sceptical, but their license FAQ is reasonable and accurate.

It is unfortunate that the code they have made available can't be combined with GPL code, but that doesn't make it worthless.

Sun to give away Java Enterprise System

Posted Dec 5, 2005 4:57 UTC (Mon) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link] (2 responses)

The CDDL is basically the MPL with some modifications to make it more reusable, which is a good thing. If you are okay with the MPL, there isn't much in the CDDL to complain about.

The MPL states that it shall be governed by California law, and litigation will be subject to the jurisdiction of the California district courts. As you can imagine, this isn't particularly appealing to developers outside of California so they develop their own MPL variant.

The CDDL externalises the choice of jurisdiction, so you don't need to modify the license text in order to not subject yourself to California law. In theory, this should help reduce license proliferation (this is a theoretical benefit until other groups adopt the license).

Sun to give away Java Enterprise System

Posted Dec 8, 2005 10:04 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] (1 responses)

I never understood this; How can anyone choose which laws they are subject to ?

If I use a [WHATEVER]PL licenced software in conflict with what the licence allows in say Norway, the developer who wants to do something about it will be forced to do so by delivering a complaint to a Norwegian court of law.

Nothing he writes in his licence gives any US (or other) court any jurisdiction whatsoever over actions undertaken by a Norwegian citizen (me) in Norway.

Is there something obvious I'm missing here ?

Sun to give away Java Enterprise System

Posted Dec 8, 2005 19:04 UTC (Thu) by swiftone (guest, #17420) [Link]

Nothing he writes in his licence gives any US (or other) court any jurisdiction whatsoever over actions undertaken by a Norwegian citizen (me) in Norway.

Sort of. Because you accept the terms of the license (and therefore get the benefits) you have agreed to cede jurisdiction to the named court. If you didn't agree, you wouldn't accept the license, and wouldn't get the perks (i.e. you would be bound by the copyright laws of your country, most of which wouldn't let you modify and distribute the code)

If you lived somewhere that didn't allow you to cede jurisdiction for a cross-border legal issue, it wouldn;t be binding. If the terms were unconscionable, the agreement could be overthrown. But in general, because you are agreeing to the license, and the jurisdiction issue is part of that agreement, they can do it.

Who cares anymore?

Posted Dec 1, 2005 23:45 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (guest, #2203) [Link] (2 responses)

Really, who still cares what Sun does? They could have been a player had they opened Java five years ago, but now if Java is to survive it will be as GCJ. Maybe if they opened it in the next couple of months they could steal the thunder back, but we all know they aren't bright enough to do that.

They talk Open and they used to believe it, but look at the fiasco Open Solaris was, they promised it for a couple of years and when it was finally released they got minimal buzz because it was just too late. Sure it has a few nice features that Linux or BSD doesn't have yet, but by now everyone see the 'yet' part, the idea that Solaris is something so special that opening it changes everything is long past. By the time this press release actually turns into a tarball it will also be long past mattering.

Who cares anymore?

Posted Dec 3, 2005 5:01 UTC (Sat) by mgerdts (guest, #27726) [Link] (1 responses)

According to SourceForge, Java isn't quite dead yet. There are currently 16,886 Java-based projects compared to 16,019 C-based projects. Competing implementations of Java are good. I'm glad that we have competing C compilers too.

OpenSolaris certainly has some unfinished business to accomplish its goals. I do find it refreshing that today I can point a browser at cvs.opensolaris.org and understand how an OS that I work with every day works. I have already gotten much of the same type of benefit from having the OpenSolaris code available that I have from having the code to Linux, Tcl, PHP, OpenLDAP, Cygwin, and Samba (yes, I have modified the code for each of these).

I don't understand how people that are quite happy using Mozilla and are at peace with the existence of BSD feel the need to critisize Sun's license choice. It seems to do a very good job of giving them the ability to use and distribute code that they do not have full rights to while still having the vast majority of the code as open source. I am absolutely amazed at how much work they have gone through to make code with such a long and tangled history as Solaris open source. BSD is not terribly GPL friendly either, is it? Which license is "at fault"? I would argue that none of them are - they each match up with the needs or philosophies of their creators. They each have also led to millions of lines of code to be available to be reused in the original products or in others. Kudos to all that write or otherwise create open source!

It will probably be several months before we see the code for the products announced. There are varying degrees of usefulness of the code when it comes out. It is not all rubbish or just a weekend of hacking from having a serious open source competitor.

Web and java app servers - who cares? Apache and JBoss do that.
Directory server - interesting... especially if it comes under a license that allows cross-polination between Red Hat's branch of the netscape directory server and Sun's branch. This directory server has a few legs up on OpenLDAP (yes - I have used both).
Identity management - My guess is that unless you have worked in an environment that is built on dozens or hundreds of acquisitions with multiple operating systems, network devices, DBMS systems, LDAP directories, etc. you probably can't see the benefit. But given this type of environment and a team of SOX auditors breathing down your neck, you may start to see the benefit. The IDM stuff seems to be kinda unique in the Open Source world.
N1 Service provisioning system - You can look at it as a pretty (or kinda ugly, depending on your view...) wrapper around Kickstart, Jumpstart, Ignite, and whatever AIX and Windows use on up to ssh, rdist, and cfengine on steroids. This is certainly good stuff, particularly when you need distributed system/application administration and a configuration management database (keeping those SOX folks happy).
N1 Grid Engine - Source code has been out there for a few years under an OSI approved license. This seems to be a reasonable competitor to academic efforts like Condor (just recently went to the "Condor Public License", previously was closed source) and commercial ventures like LSF. Very useful tool if you have the need for it.

If only Sun's marketing department could put forth the quality product that the engineers can...

Licensing

Posted Dec 5, 2005 4:12 UTC (Mon) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

> BSD is not terribly GPL friendly either, is it?

The BSD licence (once the advertising clause is removed) is *everyone's*
friend! Code under this type of licence may be incorporated into
anything and distributed under any terms, providing only that proper
copyright attribution is given. Large amounts of BSD code has been
relicensed under the GPL for incorporation into other projects.

The OpenSolaris licence does not permit the code to be linked or
incorporated with GPL software, so it's not GPL friendly.