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Progress towards open source Java

Comments[0] by Dave in Java
Danese Cooper: Earlier this week we all heard about Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green hinting they were about ready to release Java under some OSI-approved license. Supposedly they just need to nail down "How to Deal with Compatibility". I read this news with some irony, since I know that they bloody well know exactly what to do already. Its been discussed every year since 1999 inside of Sun. Their covenant with Apache and the Geronimo has already successfully demonstrated that it can be done (compatible FOSS reimplementations of Sun-generated specifications). They are simply being disingenuous. What they really mean is "How can we placate the FOSS community without giving up control?" which is the age-old question for Sun.
Give us Sun-folk a little credit. If you want open source Java runtimes (and I do), then the announcements this week were most definitely good news. Up until now, we didn't have our story straight. Jonathan Schwartz was telling people that all Sun software would be open source and the OpenSolaris folks were showing us how it could be done, but Java leaders like Gosling (and many others) seemed to be saying that Sun's implementation can never be made open source for fear of incompatible forks. Now we're all on the same wavelength. That is a good thing.

And I don't think anybody really knows "exactly what to do." I'm more than happy that the Java community is going to figure out how to do it right. I believe (and I think Danese would agree) the JCP needs some work and more participation before it can get us all working in harmony (no pun intended) on compatibility.

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(Usual disclaimer applies: I do not speak for Sun)


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