IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work [LWN.net]

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 4:35 UTC (Tue) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] (8 responses)

So after MySQL -> MariaDB, OpenSolaris -> IllumOS and OpenOffice.org -> LibreOffice, they decided that maybe they could try to keep this Java thing from becoming Classpath (or something)? Of course, it was the most important thing for them anyway.

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 4:37 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (7 responses)

There is already IcedTea from Red Hat

http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/Main_Page

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 6:19 UTC (Tue) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] (6 responses)

Sure, of course that would be the natural project. So far though there is no new (post-Oracle) industry support for IcedTea. The alternative would indeed have been that IBM would have joined IcedTea together with friends, but Oracle seems to have now learned to fight to keep their last free software project within themselves.

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 6:42 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (3 responses)

IBM is a big contributor to Apache Harmony

http://harmony.apache.org/contributors.html

It remains to be seen whether they are now abandoning that effort in favour of OpenJDK or merely hedging their bets. Being a big organization, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of different divisions doing different things.

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 6:52 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

According to this: http://www.sutor.com/c/2010/10/ibm-joins-the-openjdk-comm..., they'll be going away form Harmony.

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 9:33 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (1 responses)

It would not surprise me if IBM had multiple simultaneous strategies with Java. IBM had a licensed fork of JRE back when it was proprietary. They probably have both internal and external obligations to support.

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 17:08 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link]

they've made it pretty clear that they are out of harmony

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 8:40 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't think there is a lot of disconnect between IcedTea and OpenJDK those days. OpenJDK is slowly integrating IcedTea changes, and IcedTea is quickly rebased over new OpenJDK releases when they happen (hell, even Red Hat does not call its java package icedtea anymore, it's openjdk now, even though it's actually an icedtea-ed openjdk).

The big news here is that IBM is dropping Harmony as its open-source Java target and switching to OpenJDK. In SUN times, IBM had resisted supporting OpenJDK, backing Harmony, and trying this way to force an OpenJDK licence change away from copyleft-ish GPLish licensing. I guess they've realised Oracle was too strong to get its hand forced this way, and that they could live with GPL+CE.

IcedTea

Posted Oct 12, 2010 9:49 UTC (Tue) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

There is indeed a close working relationship between IcedTea and OpenJDK. And IcedTea has always promoted itself as not being an actual fork of OpenJDK, just a way for hackers to work together without any legal/political/technical constraints.

http://icedtea.classpath.org/ closely tracks OpenJDK, makes sure the code base can be bootstrapped with a free toolchain (GCC/GCJ/GNU Classpath), has a framework to make it possible for people to package things in GNU/Linux distributions, plugs some small holes in OpenJDK, so one can be sure to not need any proprietary blobs still left in OpenJDK/ClosedJDK, integrates with other free software projects like Cacao, VisualVM, Rhino, etc. Is a testing ground of portability of HotSpot through Zero and Shark. And adds missing pieces like Java Web Start (JNLP) and a browser plugin (Applet) support. For those that wish to sign the SCA code is contributed to OpenJDK (if existing code licenses allow assigning all rights to Oracle of course).

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 17:13 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (6 responses)

goodbye java. finally all of the "practical" coders who derided the idealism of open-source advocates are discovering that the worst-case scenario sometimes emerges

as far as i am concerned, everything oracle has acquired, specifically mysql and java, are radioactive

clojure and scala folks probably want to start investigating alternate backends or share java's slide into irrelevance

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 17:38 UTC (Tue) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link] (4 responses)

I think you underestimate the strength, vitality, and popularity of Java as a Linux enterprise development environment. It ain't going away. IBM is trying to make Java stronger by working with Oracle America's Java dev team rather than at odds. There does remain the issue with the certification code license; we'll see.

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 12, 2010 22:08 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (2 responses)

oh i'm well aware that java isn't "going away"...but it will become irrelevant. it will move steadfastly into the cabal of technologies reserved solely for outsourcing and maintenance. the cool kids were already moving away from it, and this will just finish that trend...java will truly become the new cobol

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 13, 2010 2:38 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

"java will truly become the new cobol"

Is how "cool" the language is or it's style more important than it's function for you? I happen to prefer python at the moment but I an recognize than java has an experienced and vibrant community, massive collection of reusable code libraries and is used to successfully solve a lot of problems. I suppose it's popularity in business makes it like COBOL but you say that like it's a bad thing.

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 13, 2010 20:19 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link]

yes cool matters, you'd be naive to think programming languages aren't at least partially driven by fashion

the whims of taste will dictate who uses what tools and who you can expect to work with and what types of projects and what type of culture

you're in good luck, the cool kids like python. go work with them, they have free m&m's in their snack rooms

the java crowd will be relegated to offices where they put white powder in their food-service coffee

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 14, 2010 19:14 UTC (Thu) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link]

I think you underestimate the strength, vitality, and popularity of Java as a Linux enterprise development environment.

Java is popular all right, mainly because it's pretty hard to segfault and it doesn't leak memory. But it's unpopular with me because it's slow and bloaty, for both development and finished applications.

IBM joins Oracle for OpenJDK work

Posted Oct 17, 2010 21:50 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

as far as i am concerned, everything oracle has acquired, specifically mysql and java, are radioactive

Replacing Berkeley DB might be annoying as well.

Will this make Free Java usable?

Posted Oct 13, 2010 7:34 UTC (Wed) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

Every time I've tried to run a substantial application on an open source Java implementation, it's always failed, usually with subtle but serious problems.

For that and other reasons, I've pretty much given up on Java for my development, focusing now on Python and C++ with Qt.