Nelson Minar writes:
> I'd really hate to see this list get dragged into a debate about
> Java Linux porting team politics. The folks who have donated their
> effort to bringing Java to Linux - all of them - have done a wonderful
> job. Thanks to you all!
>
>
> However, there's an interesting point here:
>
> >The big problem I have is the current closed porting method is only
> >related to Java today. This completely ignores all possibility of
> >advancing java when backward compatibility is not and issue.
>
> I'm not exactly sure what the poster has in mind, but it reminds me of
> one of my major problems with Java. Sun has a tight lock on what
> "Java" is, what the definition of it is. They don't seem very
> interested in having people hack up the VM or the language, or in
> general pushing Java in any future research directions they do not
> directly control. I think this is horribly short-sighted of Sun, and
> very frustrating, but that's their position (at least, as I see it.)
>
> Unfortunately, the JDK licensing terms reflect Sun's attempts to keep
> Java locked up.
Let's be VERY clear on this point: they're keeping their IMPLEMENTATION locked
up. Not the specs for the language. You don't need a license to implement a
Java virtual machine and/or the class libraries. This is pretty rare in the
software world. Would you believe that ParcPlace claims ownership of the CLASS
HIERARCHY of Smalltalk, and actually threatens litigation if you don't pay
their (minimal) licensing fee?
Sun has been quite reasonable with respect to having review and feedback cycles
for all new APIs -- ever hear of M$ doing that? They're trying to be as open
as they can be, in an ocean where sharks live.
Remember the big announcement last year about Sun's standards process winning
preferred submitter status with ISO (I think it was ISO)? At least the members
of the organization were satisfied that Sun's standards process was
sufficiently open to vote to grant them that status.
Can Sun do better? Sure, almost anyone can do better than they have done,
including corporations. We'd all like to see them say "Today, the JDK is
completely open source". Should we hold our breath waiting?
> I don't think it's fair to blame the Linux Java porting team for not
> making Java an open language. Their effort has been to port the Sun
> JDK to Linux. And they've done a wonderful job of it.
I want to also say that we are LEGALLY OBLIGATED to protect the sources.
Part of that protection includes having a porting mailing list that's not open
to people who do not have sources because we talk about things in the sources
and sometimes even include diffs that have small parts of the sources in them.
> What we do need, in the research community, is a more open Java
> system. Something we can all hack on, experiment with. It's not going
> to come from Sun, and therefore I suspect it's not going to come from
> the Linux porting team.
Certainly not from me -- I'm very tainted in a lot of different areas wrt
Java. I view that the Linux community has two choices:
a) we wait until completely open source versions of the Java VM, including
all the bells and whistles (in the meanwhile not being able to
develop Java applications on Linux)
- or -
b) we have some members of the community make available state of the art
versions of Java, and, *in parallel* others in the Linux/open source
community work on catching up with open source versions of Java.
The second alternative is what we have now. I think it's the best of both
worlds.
Steve
