The Cliffs of Inanity

Fri, 25 Jun 2004

Free JavaOne

I read that there will be a Open Source Java panel at JavaOne this year. Thanks to Wes Felter for this, and for pointing out that Sun failed to invite any actual Free Java hackers to talk about this.

I really messed up by not going to the conference this year. Bummer. So, on the off chance that someone attending JavaOne might read this, I've come up with some questions you might want to ask and some things to bring up.

No funny business

The aforementioned article quotes Gosling as saying, "Most of the folks in the open-source world have a pretty simplistic view of the landscape". Oh, come on. Let's name names, let's not make unverifiable assertions about what "most" of any group wants, etc. In other words, let's be really honest with each other.

So, if Gosling, or anybody, says something like this at JavaOne, please push back strongly. An argument like this is just a way to make it hard to refute what someone is asserting.

Forking

You're certain to hear the forking argument from someone on the panel. This argument goes, compatibility is one of Java's biggest selling points, and if Java is made open source, this property will be lost. This argument is wrong on several counts.

First, Sun will still control the "Java" brand. So a fork won't be called Java, just as White Box Linux isn't called "Red Hat Linux".

Second, Linux vendors won't fork Java anyway, just like they don't fork Perl, Python, Eclipse, or hundreds of other things. True, there is "forking" in the kernel, but this is explicitly encouraged by the kernel development model. And there is some forking in gcc, but if you look at what actually happens, all the changes are closely coordinated with the upstream developers -- and gcc's various ABI stability problems will not be inherited by Java, as gcc's problems originate upstream.

Problems? What problems?

Sun invariably says that they can't think of what problems open source Java would solve that aren't already solved. Of course that's ridiculous. It is pretty hard for Linux vendors to ship a working JRE on their platform if they make any sort of changes at all -- the Java vendors are just too slow. And Debian can't ship a complete Java at all, so lots of Java software ends up in unfree.

On top of this, non-free core software is something to be avoided in the community. This overly-controlled approach on Sun's part is losing the Linux desktop to .NET. I'm curious to hear what Sun has to say about this. Do they notice this? Do they care? Do they think there is some other strategy to change this?

What we want

Instead of listening to various uninvolved people project their beliefs onto Free Java developers, how about standing up and giving a little speech about what it is we really want? This is pretty simple, and it would be a nice community service.

• While open sourcing Sun's implementation would be wonderful, it isn't actually necessary. I do think that opening their implementation would help both Sun and Java, perhaps not in the short run but certainly in the medium-to-long term.
• We would like open access to the TCK for free implementations. We also believe in compatibility, and go out of our way to provide it. In fact, sometimes Sun makes this harder than it needs to be, see this thread. I've occasionally read statements indicating that the TCK is available, but it simply isn't true.
• We would like the subsetting restrictions to be lifted a bit. They are basically incompatible with the open source development process. I'm sure we could work out some kind of viable compromise in this area, preserving both our ability to hack how we like and Sun's desires for completeness and compatibility.

posted at: 14:28 | path: /software | permanent link to this entry