I've tried to stay out of this thread as much as I could; but since Paolo
is going to take this back to the "big picture" I'd like to take a second
here and say something, 'cause I perfer the big picture to the pissing wars
this could become (but thankfully hasn't yet (think "GNU/Linux" vs "Linux"
for comparison))
At 19:22 12/7/99 -0800, Paolo Ciccone wrote:
>The bottom line, and I didn't see a post about this, is that now Linux
>has a fully functional JDK/JRE that can be used to port thousands of
>applications.
I'll try to ignore the slight to blackdown, TowerJ and IBM in the rather
offhanded implicit statement that untill now there was NOT a "fully
functional JDK/JRE" on linux. While I don't care about TowerJ in the
least and I know enough people in IBM's Java circle to know this isn't
going to affect them much, I do see that exact type of mentality (and
I know it isn't originating from you Paolo) twoards OSS (and again, I
know blackdown isn't OSS) as some of the most damaging to the community
as a whole.
> For many companies this was the key factor to adopt
>Linux. Another consequense of Inprise advocating for this port (yes,
>we had a lot of talks with Sun to convince them to be directly
>involved in this) is that now Sun is giving Linux equal treatment and
>future releases of the JDK will be ported to Linux together with the
>other two main versions: Windows and Solaris. This is a big
>improvement and is another key factor in evaluating Linux as a viable
>platform.
equal distreatment you mean. OK let's be clear here, the "two main
versions" you refer to here are both REFERENCE ports, they are not
PRODUCTION JVMs. If you want production on Solaris you go to SunSoft,
not JavaSoft. (No, I'm not splitting hairs.) If you want production
on Windows... well... that's MS's job. They own the platform, they're
responsible for porting the VM - that's the way Sun made the rules,
now we've all got to live by them. Now unfortunately MS can't be
trusted to produce the production port, so Sun's got to let someone
else... how many hoops do you think IBM had to jump through to get
the "IBM Developer Kit for Windows(R), Java(TM) Technology Edition"
up on their web site? Afterall, they own OS/2, OS/400, OS/390, AIX,
VM/CMS, etc... not windows. Who then is responsible for the Linux
JVM? Well... the community, and that means it HAS to be OSS (most
likely GPL at that). But of course Sun won't go for that any more
than they'll go for MS doing the production Win32 port. So they're
left trying to figure out who "owns" the Linux platform. At the time
Steve was the most viable option, knowing that he'd sublicense to
others - with the SCSL I'm not so sure; IBM is equally viable - but
not politically favorable in Sun right now; TowerJ's stuff has never
sat well with the purists (myself included). So who does that leave?
You say you want a production VM, you say this move puts Linux onto
the same footing as Javasoft's other two platforms. I say these two
are contradictory. Remember you get what you pay for: do you want to
run your company's enterprise ERP solution on the JVM you got in your
cereal box this morning? Now I've always counted OSS projects like
Linux and Apache as the exception that proves the rule... but Javasoft's
VMs don't.
>Trying to close with a positive note...this is just the beginning for
>Java on Linux, hold on tight ;)
Oh Java and Linux are definently just beginning alright... but it was
two years ago and you almost missed the boat.
and as for all your reasurances that Inprise wants to put credit
where credit is due... I'll believe _you_ want to, because you've
been a part of this list, but as a company, Inprise is not
recognizing blackdown, as a search of their press release archive
clearly shows. In actuality I've only found two hits for blackdown
on all of inprise.com's public web presence... one is a support
statement for the JBuilder JIT, the other a brief mention in
Bruce and Dave's excellent adventure. Neither is Sun in any public
forum. I don't really expect Inprise to (although doing so would be
good for the corporate soul) but as long as they're taking creidt
for this then I do expect Javasoft to.
disclaimers: IANAL, IDNSFME. I am not a lawyer, I do not speak for
my employer.
cabbey at home dot net <*> http://members.home.net/cabbey
I want a binary interface to the brain!
Today's opto-mechanical digital interfaces are just too slow!
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