On Tue, May 16, 2006 at 10:46:55AM -0700, Geir Magnusson Jr wrote: > I was at the J1 keynote this morning hoping to hear news about Sun > open-sourcing Java. > > First, they announced some kind of distribution-like agreement with > Ubuntu, so that any Debian-based distro can easily install Java. It > wasn't clear if they really are going to distribute Ubuntu w/ Java or > just make it easy to install via apt. I guess it's a new license for
Since I am not at JavaOne, and thus out of reach of catapulted T-shirts, here is the gist of it: SPOILER ALERT This post contains sarcasm and pokes mild fun at Sun. You can still hit 'd', if you can't stand someone making fun of Sun's antics. SPOILER ALERT Basicially, Sun decided to fix the more wacky parts of the binary license that made it impossible for distributions to ship the JDK without having to ram down Sun's proprietary software down the throats of their users, and leave them no choice of a free software alternative. After ~5 years of Debian pointing out the obvious issues[1] of that one, Sun eventually figured out that it may not be such a great idea, after all. That blazingly fast display of the ability to listen follows Schwartz's so accurately titled blog entry "Java, and Survival of the Most Adaptable". E pur si muove! :) > their binaries. This is good news - one of the motivations of Harmony > was to help make Java a first-class citizen on Linux, and this is a > solid step in that direction. Sorta. Kinda. It's basically the first step Sun made to get off their appreciation for applying Microsoft's Windows OEM licensing concepts to the redistributors of the JDK/JRE binaries. They could have done a lot better than with the license they ended up with. They could have also done worse, I guess, given Sun's legal divisions' masterworks like the "Read Only" license. It's a huge step for Sun, no wonder it took 5 years to remove a handful of clauses from the BCL. :) > Second.... I'm not sure how to describe this. When Jonathan Schwartz > (the CEO of Sun) asked Rich Green (the new EVP of software) if he was > going to open-source Java, the answer was "the question isn't if, but > how..." (or something like that) > > I suppose that means they have made some sort of decision to do it, but > have no idea how or when. Well, if you've seen Jonathan Schwartz pompously 'open source Java3D' a few years ago, and then seen that after the hype cleared up, it meant that Sun was keeping Java3D proprietary, and just releasing a bunch of coding examples under a anti-nuclear BSD license, you know what to expect: more of the same. My guess from Sun's past performance pseudo-open-sourcing Java3D, JAI, etc. is that Schwartz will 'open source Java' in 2010, with huge fanfares, and when one looks at the small print, that will actually mean that you'll be able to get the examples from the Swing trail, and nothing else, under the anti-nuclear BSD license. :) > So, while many of us knew that Sun will OSS Java eventually, it's still > good news, and it's nice to see that the Java ecosystem is moving slowly > but surely to openness :) For a suitable definition of 'openness', which Sun has not figured out yet ... so no new license announcement just yet. :) Nevertheless, I propose the name Java 'Openness' License for the upcoming wonderlicense at JAvaOne 2010. :) cheers, dalibor topic [1] http://groups.google.de/group/linux.debian.legal/browse_thread/thread/41c95fc0e542c5c5/cfcff8fd3e4b4d63?lnk=st&q=jdk+debian-legal&rnum=35&hl=de#cfcff8fd3e4b4d63 > geir > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Terms of use : http://incubator.apache.org/harmony/mailing.html > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Terms of use : http://incubator.apache.org/harmony/mailing.html To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
