In an about-face that could have a dramatic impact in the Java tools space, Sun Microsystems Inc. has indicated it might be willing to join the IBM-sponsored Eclipse open-source development platform effort—but only if momentum to spin off the effort into an independent organization continues.
Sun Mulls Joining Java Eclipse Effort
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Poor babies… they want only to join an open committee? I wonder how the shoe feels on the other foot. Hypocritical bastards.
… wha?
I think he’s referring to sun’s reluctancy to open source java
Yeah whatever… Sun is joining the Eclipse effort until McNealy says something like ‘Don’t touch Eclipse with ten foot pole’
I can’t believe anything Sun says any more, especially after Sun’s lame attempts to capitalise on the SCO debacle.
not only that: it has been admirably well-documented, which is even more important. And what about OpenOffice? Sun doesn’t seem hypocritical to me. OK, how about the company that has the most standards-compliant (that is, OPEN standards) UNIX operating system? Yes, that’s Solaris.
When will these iidiots stop spreading misinformation (that is, lies) about Sun’s commitment to open source and OPEN STANDARDS?
http://wwws.sun.com/software/communitysource/
Green said that although Sun is considering involvement with Eclipse, the company would not be moving its core development platform to Eclipse.
Luckily they’re not dumping Netbeans! I personally prefer it to Eclipse. Also I don’t see sun abandoning swing for SWT. So what is this anouncement all about?
Thought Sun has free Java-based IDE called NetBean
-> directly compete with Eclipse.
Merge NetBean and Eclipse??
When will these iidiots stop spreading misinformation (that is, lies) about Sun’s commitment to open source and OPEN STANDARDS?
When Sun becomes committed. Maybe its just Scott McNealy or some other execs who dislike Linux. I don’t know. But I’m not the one making the bad press for them or paying SCO license fees with their money. Actions speak louder than words. And without OpenOffice they’d have no leg to stand on.
Java? I don’t care about java. They can keep it. I use Perl!
Sun has been a huge disappointment for me. Their entire platform is open. Their hardware is beautiful, and expensive, and their software is very well designed with security and stability in mind. Java is nice, too. And OpenOffice kicks ass! But are they committed? Would they be an open source player if they had more market share? Or do they just want to be the dot in dotcom?
Perhaps they’re the last dotcom waiting to fade away..
I think they owe the open source community an appology for how they acted during the SCO confusion. But I’m happily using OpenOffice, so I don’t care what they do. I just don’t trust them. Its a sort of love-hate relationship, IMO.
Merge NetBean and Eclipse??
Unlikely since the GUI components are intrinsically different. Sun has kept with Swing, Eclipse with SWT. There are evangalists for both the widget toolkits, but for the moment at least SWT is clearly the performance winner on windows and motif. GTK+ is a little lagging in performance but based on my experience still faster than Swing, it is just not glaringly obvious like on the other two platforms.
On the political side of things this would be a big win for Eclipse. Even if Sun does not officially endorse SWT, to have thier name as a partner would lend credibility to the IDE in some spheres.
I love Eclipse and especially the plug-in environment. I have writen 2 plug-ins and the structure is a pleasure to work with. In most projects of this size there is a significant learning process because you need to understand how the components interact. In Eclipse they managed to do componentization correctly and there is little you need to understand to create your own extensions. I am getting a little worried with all the features they are adding to core though and hope they come up with a way to uninstall or turn off features. The features are “gee whiz” neat but really don’t help me do my job so I would rather get rid of them for sake of speed/memory.
“so here’s a link for anon the dumb”
I looked through both your posts, and you said absolutely nothing.
Well, you gave me a link to the SCSL. Little did you know it says, “These important differences and other details make Community Source a powerful combination of the best of the proprietary licensing and the more contemporary open source technology licensing models.”
In other words, it ain’t open.
http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Case_study_non_open.html
If you had ever read osnews.com, you would know that Sun drags on its feet on open standards. They talk, McNealy talks, but clearly Sun just wants to do anything desperate to take down a more important company, Microsoft.
Google for two words: “sun jboss”. Pick any link from the page. Then come back and tell me about a “commitment to open standards.” Sun is the 800-pound gorilla controlling the community process. And I’m fine with Sun doing such things, Java has been a double-edged sword, but I feel no pity at all if they suddenly want a more independent committee so they can actually take part in Java’s desktop attack.
Sun needs to make money, but I do not respect how they invited the federal government into the industry, nor their impotent, virulent attacks on Microsoft when they’re no less “evil.”
First your JBoss argument. This has been brought up before. Suns problem was that JBoss was saying they were j2ee compliant, when in fact they werent. They just didn’t want JBoss using the J2EE symbol when there platform didn’t conform to the standards. (did you read any of the links you googled, and if so, were any of the issues around JBoss being open source? think not) It has nothing to do with it being Open source so its irrealavent.
Also, open standards != open source quit comparing the two. Sun has, and uses both. You can download the source for java, and they have several projects that they have contributed to the community such as NetBeans and OpenOffice.org. Also, open source != linux, so don’t get all up in arms when they move slowly into a new field that will likely cost them a lot to get started in.
More Sun fanatics! Hi, Nick.
Suns problem was that JBoss was saying they were j2ee compliant, when in fact they werent… (did you read any of the links you googled, and if so, were any of the issues around JBoss being open source? think not)
Please don’t project your illiteracy onto me. From my first Google link:
“Bickel identified four different issues that were sticking points in the negotiations: incompatibility with SCSL, the Closed Source Test Kit, JBoss’ app server getting too big to ignore and of course… money.”
Now, Sun has an obvious problem. They let Java loose, and it commoditizes their hardware. [ http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html ] So how does Sun receive any return on their investment? Licensing j2ee is one way. And the need for his puts them into antagonism with Opensource business models, especially since they need to protect companies like BEA without letting them compete on incompatible features.
Is this bad? Probably not. But McNealy has demonized Microsoft with all the FUD you can imagine, stirring hatred in the mainstream press; while at least Microsoft tried putting an affordable OS on everyone’s desk. (Microsoft lets you be more free with hardware than Apple or Sun ever would.) So it makes sense to hold Sun to a high standard between what they say and do.
Fact: Sun tightly controls Java, even withdrawing it from standardization.
Fact: Sun wants Eclipse’s process to be more “independent” before they join.
Do you see the humor?
Now, the next time someone writes a “dumb/illiterate anon” letter full of ironic misspellings, I’ll let it slide because they’re never interesting.
I have grown absolutely tired of people talking about open-source in all the wrong contexts. After a read through this thread, I still see people equating open-source with better. Open-source is not always better in every context. I’d love to hear everyone’s reason to want Java to be open-sourced. Yeah, that should merit some serious thinking which I am absolutely sure some of these posters as well as people elsewhere have side-stepped. I use Java for all sorts of programs and I am thinking to myself . . . why on God’s green earth do I absolutely have to have it open-sourced? I see the source code to the Java API just fine. Sun has pushed the Java platform forward at a respectable rate. I am sick to my stomach to hear one more person jump on the band-wagon of open-source because somehow their geeky friends say it is cool. I think most people would agree that they see no real difference between Sun having some control over Java and open-source committers having some control over their respective software. Have any of you who complain about Sun tried submitting a patch to an open-source project? It’s just like an old boys club half the time . . . I could care less if I’m dealing with Sun or Mr. Committer. It’s all the same to me . . . I have to jump through the same hoops.
There’s a lot of hedging in this article but the way I read it Sun is going to come around to supporting the eclipse effort as means of demonstrating the power of a java standard, just like their eventual acknowledgement of jboss. Currently it’s important to them to have a standard with multiple implementations of things, particularly supporting systems like IDE’s.
Sun is, in their own way, as or more ruthless than Microsoft, but they have a kind of samurai sense of honor. I suspect the reasons for encouraging Eclipse have a lot to do with compitition with .NET as well as possible courtroom shenanigans they’re expected. They would like to point to their open standard and say, “See? This is how play fair.”
Have any of you who complain about Sun tried submitting a patch to an open-source project? […] I could care less if I’m dealing with Sun or Mr. Committer. It’s all the same to me . . . I have to jump through the same hoops.
Oh, definitely. Just to clarify, I only dislike Sun for its hypocrisy, and it’s really people like McNealy doing it, not everyone in the company. So I’m being a bit unfair. In fact, I’ll stop this criticism because I just wanted to give out a Nelson Muntz-like HA-HA when I saw this article, and I didn’t expect people to jump all over me.
I don’t believe Opensource is necessarily technically better, and Sun did incredible technical work with Java. They’ve made mistakes, like with Swing. They didn’t put enough resources into something like JGoodies, maybe because its API requires more skill than they wanted to support in the java/javax libraries. And making it Free Software might’ve eliminated bugs that developers begged them to accept fixes for. But these are nitpicks, in the face of great docs, clean APIs, and sourcecode that can be peeked at. Java was probably even unhealthy for Sun, which makes it a sacrifice.
Still, HA-HA.
In a perfect world I think all software should be open source. Not free mind you, and not necessarily GPL, just open source. That said, Sun had been fairly supportive of the community, including helping the Blackdown project. Sun is very conrolling over Java, but guess what, it is thier product. Sun is not under any obligation to give it away. They are a business, not a charity. JBoss complained that it cost too much money to be certified and Sun would not certify them because it would hurt the companies who paid to be J2EE certified. Again, cry me a river, Sun is in it for the money, why should they certify JBoss for free? Sun does not systematically crush thier competition, they just ask them not to advertise certifications they have not passed. Comparing thier actions to Microsofts is silly. This is not to say Sun is without fault, just the magnitude of fault is much smaller.
On that note I believe that Sun made the testing suite available to JBoss, does anyone know what came of that?
On that note I believe that Sun made the testing suite available to JBoss, does anyone know what came of that?
Well, nothing came of it, of course, because JBoss is nothing like j2ee compliant. JBoss, like Sun, is a commercial enterprise. JBoss likes to make a lot of noise about how Sun are evil and oppressing them, so they can claim to compete with certified and j2ee compliant appservers. This is all smoke and mirrors, though, because JBoss is not remote j2ee compliant and has a lot of work left until it is. I commend Sun’s actions designed to shut them up, by saying “Here you go whiners, here’s the test suite. Be finished in a week you say? Heh, yeh right.” It has meant the JBoss publicity whores have been forced to shut the hell up about Sun oppressing them and can no longer falsely claim to be j2ee compliant, when they aren’t anything like j2ee compliant.
JBoss really is an awful product. I’d rather use anything than that pile of shit, with its deliberately obfuscated design, closed, out of documentation that you have to pay for, and so on. It is of course, like many open source projects, deliberately designed to be difficult to use and obscurantist so that its support-based business model can be remotely viable – they depend on developers not having a clue of how to work it and needing assisstance at every step. It really is a pile of shit, and of course, thanks to the restrictive GPL, no great shakes in the “free software” department either. Roll on a BSD licensed Geronimo from the Jakarta project – about the only open source java people who’s products I admire.
I really don’t understand why people cry and accuses Sun of not open sourcing java. A big part of the great success of Java is that there is ONLY ONE entity saying what goes into Java.
I am, as a programmer of Java, not interested in javing 10 “distributions” of Java, each one with the bits and variantions added by every provider. The big proof was when Microsoft released its own Java VM so diferent, that I’m sure 50% or more applications developed using Microsoft J++ 6 (and I feel it’s much much more) have code that is not compatible with Sun Java, and worst, that will not run unless you modify directly the Java VM (delegators, for example, used extensivelly in WFC). Think about it twice. More than the half of the applications developped using the Microsoft Visual J++ 6, locked inside Microsoft Java VM, inside Windows. That’s a total failure of “Develop Once, Run Everywhere”, which is one of the best parts of Java.
If you want a pure “open source like” Java, look at GCJ. It’s very cool. It also can cause some damage to java with CNI, but luckyly “native interface” is not as wide used as the language itself, which the GCC team want to support just the same way as Sun, also the Java side of this other native interface is pure Java, so it does not violate Java per se.
And JBOSS IS NOT J2EE COMPLIANT, I have checked it myself, so it’s OK for Sun to claim not to use the J2EE logo.
JOnAS seems more compliant with J2EE specification, is LGPL, and has all the documentation free. I’m not sure if JOnAS is full compliant or not, I use it ’cause all the J2EE stuff I need is implemented.
Also I think Sun has done much more for the open community with all their open specifications and standard that any other entity in this World. If you want an open source implementantion, then DO IT YOUR SELF, DONT ASK OTHER PEOPLE TO GIVE HIS WORK FOR FREE. I like the open source movement, and try to support it some way or other, but people has the right to choose… If you don’t like this way, don’t use their products.
That’s my… aaa… mmm…. 50 cents.
If you had ever read osnews.com, you would know that Sun drags on its feet on open standards
I guess one has to read exclusively OSNews in order to be indoctrinated enough into your lies. Obviously, you either don’t understand what open sandsrds mean (and hence, as any ignoramus of yor caliber, hate whatever you don’t understand) or chose to ignore the facts in order to push some senseless Linux agenda. Linux, which, I should add, does not comply to the open UNIX standards of the OpenGroup. Why? Because it has been developed by a bunch of ignoramuses that think they invented the world and everything good can only come from their Linux Kernels and MPlayers, grubs and whatnot.
Linux has been the playing ground of second rate programmers that really don’t know anything about system design and interoperability (to name just two of the many areas they have no clue about).
It is a logical step if they want to be alive oppositely with .NET and it’s Windows.Forms. But IMHO it is not enoght: they need better language (some ‘syntactic sugar’ like properties, events, operator overloading) and the most important: I don’t want start new java engine for every java based application.
“If you had ever read osnews.com, you would know that Sun drags on its feet on open standards.”
And if you had ever read osnews.com carefully, you would know that OSNews is huge fun of Gnome and .NET, and they always release news about how gnome rocks and kde sucks, and how mono&.NET rocks and sun&java sucks. Every week, for instance, you can see another flashing news bullet containing beta release of gnome or mono or .NET tutorial links.
nuff said.
KDE – yes, it is true. You can’t develop commercial KDE application, because the commercional version of Qt is not binary compatible with KDE’s Qt.
Java – yes, it is also true. At this moment java not too useable on desktop. If you want start two or three java based application this apps will eat all of your resources. And most of swing applications are not too nice. And if you see C# far better language then java. Only one big problem with C# and mono: the Microsoft patents. But it is not the only one patent problem under linux: the SCO is bigger monster at this moment.
IMHO, Sun is very committed to Open Standards/interoperability.
(see UNIX,POSIX,TCP/IP,X,NFS,Java,JXTA,GNOME
some are not open source, but really open standard)
Well, d’you expect Sun to acts like non-profit organization?
Sun is just like the others, like Red Hat, IBM, Trolltech, Ximian, Novell, or even SCO and Microsoft!
You can sez IBM put lots of money in Linux,
but most of thier money is for porting Linux technology to work with their machine/software. ..did IBM do it for free? i don’t think so. And Eclispe also a base for WebSphere IDE (just like NetBeans is for Sun Studio, formerly Forte).
Everybody has its own interest, its own money & time to invest.
If open source world can get something out of that — GREAT!! LUCKY!! BRILLIANT!!
But if not, it just fine.
Why bother?
And well, about JBoss.
JBoss is actually not J2EE platform,
but it try to make its customer think it is.
And this will undoubtfully harm the standard.
(what if one J2EE app can’t run on JBoss “J2EE” Server?)
So Sun needs to stop it.
It has to be said that Linux (and it’s backers) have never claimed Linux was a full-fledged UNIX. Linus has stated quite directly on the Linux kernel mailing-list that he has no desire to be either UNIX compliant or Posix compliant. He has stated, as have others, that those standards are… well… sub-standard (no pun intended). Instead, Linux has formed it’s own de facto standard, and most (developers and end users, not UNIX fanboys) agree it is better (if somewhat more fluid).
Oh, and don’t be fooled into thinking that just because they call themselves the “OpenGroup” that they’re really open at all. There is absolutley zero community involvement at the OpenGroup.
I could be wrong. Just my $0.02.
I find it funny how folks always critique Sun and give other companies like IBM a free pass. I’m not aware of any other large for-profit company who has contributed more (and highly relevant) code to the open source world. Between contibutions to Gnome, OpenOffice, Netbeans, NFS, etc and adherence to various standards I can’t believe the childish reaction to every move Sun makes. This give us everything thing for free or we piss on you attitude is childish and really doesn’t offer a balanced view of reality. And yes I do work for Sun and cringe every once in a while when McNealy says something that is a little off base. Is there more things Sun could be doing – of course. Is Sun doing it’s fair share of contribution – without a doubt.
1. Sun stated a long time ago that Java would be an open standard controlled by an independent standards committee. To this day they haven’t done that.
2. It is impossible to make an open source version of Java from scratch because the license for the specifications dont allow it. Don’t believe me, go look at the license.
3. The J2EE compatibility line is crap. J2EE certification is done by the vendor trying to certify themselves and to pass, you simply need to document what you don’t support. No complex J2EE application will run on multiple app servers without taking the time to port to each on individually. Aside from that, I have yet to find a J2EE app that can’t be ported to run on JBoss.
Sun likes open source when it advances their causes (OOo and Netbeans are both leverage to move people away from Microsoft) and they do everything they can to scare people away from it when it might hurt them (open sourceing java will cause fragmentation, McNealy’s comments about Linux being like trading mp3s online).
hmm.. just curious about (3),
if it’s really Java why bother “porting”?