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Sun to coders: Open source Java won't change your life

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 6 comments
Builder UK; By Jonathan Bennett
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Sun's decision to make Java SE open source won't make any difference to the majority of Java programmers, according to the company's chief open source officer. Simon Phipps, speaking at a breakfast briefing in London on Tuesday, told Builder UK that he's long held the belief that coders working with Java don't care whether the source code is available for their platform or not.

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Comments (6)

Is it me, or does Mr. Phipps’ statement make no sense at all? If nobody cared, why would Sun Open Source Java (whatever subset of it) in the first place?

Or is this marketing speak for "Don't get all emotional, all you anti-Open Source Java Developers, our much vaunted “Write-Once-Run-Anywhere-Where-Sun-Provides-A-Binary-VM” is not going to change with an Open Source Java?

Is everybody at the same page at Sun? The schizophrenic YES – NO antics of Sun with relation to FL/OSS are becoming very weird. You’d say that PR and Legal would want a unified face towards the world.
It's just you. The statement makes perfect sense.

He is saying what java developers want to hear: your world is not going to change in any major way. You can continue to develop as you always have.

And he's right.

Think of how often you go into apache code, postgresql code, php internals, etc. For the vast majority of us -- especially in corporate or commercial settings where we've just got to get work done -- the source code is "out there", but we don't use it. We want the software to work, we want to do the things we do.

In the case of java, which has been freely available and actively maintained by Sun, freeing the code should not make much practical difference in the way developers work.

It may mean that java works better -- more eyes and all that -- but it may not. As has been noted many times on this site, free doesn't guarantee good. And Sun is hardly Microsoft when it comes to software quality.

By the way -- where have you found anti-Open Source java developers? I'm working at a java shop now, and haven't found any.







In addition, the CDDL(which is likely what they will use) is only valid for certain Sun approved values of "free". One can imagine what would happen if someone stepped outside of those boundries. Patent knife anyone?
By the way -- where have you found anti-Open Source java developers? I'm working at a java shop now, and haven't found any.

So you've not encountered any "don't open source Java, it will lead to billions of incompatible forks" types? Lucky you. You must stay clear of the net most of the time ;)
Next time you see one, ask why there are not dozens of incompatible forks of PHP, Python and many other succesfull languages. The only language I can think off that did fork is Lisp.
r_a_trip -

I must have parsed your statement wrong.

I read it as anti Open Source as opposed to anti Open Source java.

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