[quote]SAN FRANCISCO – Demonstrating a perhaps more aggressive path than anticipated, Sun Microsystems is set to announce the open-sourcing of the core Java platform within 30 to 60 days, Sun President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz said at the Oracle OpenWorld conference on Wednesday morning.
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http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/25/HNschwartzjava_1.html
Good news?
Thats pritty much what I was wondering about. depence on the licence I gues.
not really sure if open sourcing java would really be a good thing, it has both advantages and disadvantages.
good news is it might be possible to strip the jvm and then include it with java apps and it’ll be updated and optimised much more frequently (hopefully).
however i fear that it may lead to a wave of new features to the language making it more complex thus loosing one of its strong points of simplicity.
Thats already gone out the window with generics…
one problem that will arise is that there may be an influx of 3rd party VMs, and you better hope your program runs “good enough” on them or somehow you’ll magically be to blame for not being “compatible enough”
I fail to see that point. eplaining class cast’s all over the place to students is a lot harder then simply explaining them that if you define your class as such the class will only hold that type and subtypes of that type.
implenting a object that holds an genetric isn’t useally attemped by first year students and still there is nothing stopping you from doing it the old way. by the time they do create objects where you write holds a objects there are imo lots of other stuff that’s probebly harder to grasp than those simple genetrics.
In any case it results in a waring which is blatantly ignored by ppl who start to program, well most of them.
“This program is only compatible with sun certified JVM’s, no support or guaranty is given on other JVM’s.”
I mean that is an discrete requirement if you compair it for instance to EA’s, “this game requires adminastrive rights to play” which is stupid, but adleast they have the balls to actually include it on the box. Ok ok… it’s in smallish print.
Does Sun even have a certification program for VM implementations?
In the case of embedded J2ME, it certainly seems not to.
rofl ;D
I know theres a test compatability suite and some form of certification not sure about the extend.
Open sourcing is good for Java.
What we want is a strong “body” determining what’s considered Standard Java. This “body” must also have the legal rights to the Java trademark otherwise it will be teethless. (We for example don’t want a situation similar to that of C++ where Microsoft has hijacked C++ and made into their own language called C++/CLI).
Open sourcing Java will finally free it from everything that has held it down so far. It finally can be a programming language among others without any religious notions about what it is or how it must be used.
I understand Mr McNeally had to leave for this to happen. Although he went in bed with Mr Gates to get Java into Microsoft it would have been too much even for him to see J# turned into proper Java. But that’s what’s going to happen when Java is open sourced. J# will be Standard Java and the Microsoft’s implementation of Java as good and valid as the Sun’s.
That’s how Java’s future is secured. I thank the gods Sun has realised it.
And of course the attitude towards DirectX had to change when Java was open sourced.
Before it was felt that Java had to support OpenGl only (to satisfy old Microsoft bashers), but once Java was open sourced it became clear that Java, to be used in games, needed an API to DirectX. Otherwise it was realised it would be toast.
Erm …, under the hood, Java3D has a direct3d implementation. If you want a raw binding for it, then look to the open source community, those are the people who did the first several generations of opengl bindings. You won’t find a binding, but thats because nobody wanted it enough to put their money (or time) where there mouth was and write one.
The GTG at sun picked the accelerated graphics API that met their own requirements (what they wanted), and wrote a binding for that with the help of the community, I don’t suspect they had much of a choice if they had portability as one of their requirements. The point is, it was their choice to implement what suited them for their requirements.
In the early days, open source devs needed an opengl binding so they wrote one. The fact that there isn’t a well know directx binding is an indication of how badly one is needed/how complex it is. If you desperatly need one. Take a look at GlueGen which with alot of effort, will write one for you, or just go out and write the JNI code yourself. Either way, it’s up to us, just like it was with opengl to start with (when I say us, I mean the JGO/open source community, I don’t care much for direct 3d, so I’m not fussed).
Endolf
We had that very same discussion with him already. You are only wasting your time 
If anyone (like uj, uj and uj) wants to talk further about dx… start your own thread. Thanks.
So back to topic. I’m really looking forward shipping some embedded stripped down (up to date!) VM and the timing happens to be very nice for me, too.
The license for ME/SE will be most likely GPL, which isnt as bad as it initially sounds. You wont have to gpl your java app, because its only data from the VM pov.
Im actually looking forward to some more companies modifying the VM in certain ways, say Sony modifying the VM to work on the PS3. The Sun team probably doesn’t have enough resources to do what eveything that everyone wants and I think this will be a change for the good.
* darkprophet crosses fingers ;D
Im actually looking forward to some more companies modifying the VM in certain ways, say Sony modifying the VM to work on the PS3.
Haha. Its funny how useless the GPL would be in such a case.
Oh yeah, that would mean that all their libs would have to be GPL too…that sucks!
Lets all protest for BSD! BSD 4eva
that would mean that all their libs would have to be GPL too
I think that isnt the case. I just ment that the source for a PS3 VM isnt of any use for anyone else. Unless of course you rip off the complete architecture in which case you wouldnt need the source at all.
On the one hand open-sourcing Java is ‘setting it free’ but on the other hand it’s an admission by Sun that it can’t spare the resources to develop it to where it needs to be to stay competitive (against.NET).
Also, I hope Sun keeps some kind of executive authority so that quick & critical decisions can be made & not stalled in the beauracratic JCP process. The Java Community Process sounds too much like the UN. Also, you what happened when a commitee tried to design a horse…
An Apache license would be great cause then the Harmony guys could use the code. imo apache’s ability to produce awesome software is one the biggest reasons why Java has become so popular.