Sun says open-source Java possible in ‘months’
After hearing about Sun’s “open source” threats for so long, the media coverage suddenly died down. I came across this article today.
I still don’t fully understand what their definition of open source is, but will it ever be a satisfying one? I guess, semi-open source is better than nothing. The artice states two major issues that Sun has. 1) how to keep Java compatible and 2) ensure no particular company uses market forces as muscle for its own implementation, a move that would threaten Java’s “write once, run anywhere” mantra.
Hmmm.. sure.
I really enjoyed Dalibor Topic’s quote in the article. It encompasses the success of Kaffe and GNU Classpath all into a few lines. I fully believe that Sun is only threatened by how far we have come and all the support we maintain.
“Basically, we’ve already come 90 percent of the way towards having several full, compatible, free software Java 1.5 implementations, without Sun’s support,” Topic said. “I don’t think that Sun would like to promote the message that open source Java has, for the most part, already been done, without them contributing.”
Hmm, still a little bit vague, but an interesting article. They still don’t say which license it will be, but I guess that it’s going to be CDDL (whatever that means, I just read a few paragraphs of it, it’s quite hard to read compared to the GPL or AL2). But I guess for the existing free runtimes it’s more interesting if the TCKs will be made open source, I’m not sure if Sun has already answered this. Just my 2 (Euro) cents.
What I mean by open source: Sun will release its implementation of Java under an OSI-approved license – no statement on which one yet. Is that “semi-open-source”? I regard that as the real deal.
Concerning the compatibility issue, I have explained at length what that is about on my blog. I personally believe it is best addressed through well-designed and transparent governance.
Finally, Dalibor points out that the quote from him sounds much more confrontational than it really was. The whole point of JCPA 2.5 and later was to allow multiple implementation including Free software, so Sun is hardly opposed to it.
S.
I agree with your comment, but I really don’t like that the idea of ‘open source’ has become such a giant legal issue.
I didn’t take Dalibor’s comment as confrontational, I felt it clearly stated how far our implementation has come. And clearly, if it were not for GNU Classpath and all of the developers, users, testers then Sun may not have taken a step towards open source.
I really hope it does happen. I don’t think anyone is against Sun’s decision, if anything they are for it.