java ain’t open source?

Monday, Mar 19. 2007  –  Category: OpenSource

you , my friend, are an idiot.

“I guess this shows my first point up as being a little inaccurate.”

Uh. No. My car coming with a 31mpg highway estimated mileage is a little inaccurate. You are a little inaccurate in the same way the Titanic’s calculations were a little inaccurate.

Update: I retract and apologise for my undeserved insult of Nick. My issue with his post still stands, but my name-calling was uncalled for. Leaving the original text (struckout) for posterity so all may view my immaturity ;-)…. (please see the comments below for more elaboration)

4 Responses to “java ain’t open source?”

  1. DaveG Says:
    March 22nd, 2007 at 23:30

    It would have been much better if you actually contributed something to the conversation instead of just calling someone an idiot, especially when that person had already gone and admitted they made a mistake.

    How about commenting on Nick’s points that you can write open-source software on any technology, and that choosing an open-source technology to base a commercial application upon is not necessarily a sound business decision?

    Since you brought up the subject of being inaccurate you won’t mind if highlight the point that Sun has not open sourced the Java programming language nor the platform API’s or specifications - those are still governed by the JCP and final decisions will still be made by the JCP Executive Committee.

    What Sun is doing is open sourcing their implementations of the Java SE and Java ME specifications. More importantly Sun will still retain a huge amount of control over what goes into it. From the FAQ at http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/faq.jsp:

    Q: Who will decide which contributions are accepted to the OpenJDK code base? A: As with the JDK 6 initiative, the final decision will rest with Sun during this interim period.

  2. Stephen Lau Says:
    March 23rd, 2007 at 08:00

    No, a better admission would have been to update his title and actually correct the mistake rather than pass it off as being “a little inaccurate,” when in fact it is completely wrong.

    I didn’t feel the need to comment on his point that you can write open-source software on any technology - since of course I agree. That should be an obvious point to any software developer. Licensing has nothing to do with implementation from a technological perspective. I didn’t feel the need to explicitly agree with him there.

    Choosing an open-source technology to base a commercial application upon seems (to me, anyway) a more sound business decision than choosing a closed-source technology. Let’s assume all technological benefits are the same… they are equally robust, scalable, performant*, and reliable. Why would one choose a closed-source version vs. the open-source version? Granted, this is not always true… perhaps the closed-source version is better in some way, or perhaps the open-source version is better in other ways. But again, a “sound business decision” is the decider’s opinion. Some people weight open-source considerably more favourably than others.

    And to address your last point: the final decision will rest with Sun during this interim period. Keyword being interim. Sun is in the process of defining the governance for this project… nobody should expect a large commercial software runtime or application like OpenJDK to be open-sourced and setup overnight. Proper governance needs to be setup if you want to run a fully open-source community. No open-source project allows Joe Schmoe to just check in code without proper checks and approvals.

  3. M Freitas Says:
    March 23rd, 2007 at 12:55

    C’mon… It’s not nice to someone associated with Sun to go around calling names. And over what? Software definitions? Sheesh. I wonder what would be when important things are at stake?

    He even writes “please correct me if I’m wrong as I haven’t worked in the Java space for quite some time”. But instead of participating of a “conversation” and explaining why he’s wrong, you decided to attack the messenger.

    What happened to attack the message, not the messenger?

  4. Stephen Lau Says:
    March 23rd, 2007 at 14:36

    This is my personal blog - not a Sun blog, so please don’t interpret anything I say as being associated with Sun.

    My issue is with his “correction”:

    *I guess this shows my first point up as being a little inaccurate. *

    Which seems like a very condescending correction, as it drastically understates the incorrectness of his statement and header.

    Agreed, my text is an overly harsh and personal attack - for that I apologise. But my issue with his post still stands.

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