Dear Java Developers: Told Ya So!
Jon Davis (aka "stimpy77") has been a programmer, developer, and consultant for web and Windows software solutions professionally since 1997, with experience ranging from OS and hardware support to DHTML programming to IIS/ASP web apps to Java network programming to Visual Basic applications to C# desktop apps. Jon is a DZone MVB and is not an employee of DZone and has posted 18 posts at DZone. View Full User Profile
Well, I suppose I didn’t tell you so, I didn’t knock on every Java developer’s door and say it. But I did say it. To myself. In a soft mumble. LOL.
What I said is that Java is not any more “Open Source” than .NET is. Granted, a huge majority of the open source community such as the gobs and gobs of projects that have been hosted for like ever at http://sourceforge.net/ are Java-focused. But Java as a platform itself has always been far from open source.
I couldn’t get that Java vs .NET fake movie trailer video. It would have made more sense if it was .NET vs. PHP, Python, or Ruby, but Java?
I could never understand where Java developers got the idea that Microsoft was on this dominating consumption spree to gobble up everything that’s innovative and sue everyone who used their platform, but yet Java was somehow free from all of this. No programming language has set a monetary-loss/gain precedent like Sun set against Microsoft with suing and winning over the language’s platform like Java has. It was this very behavior from Sun that had me rushing away from Java and into the arms of C# as soon as C# was announced.
It should come as no surprise, then, that Java’s owner would now sue again, once again over the use of the platform in a free, open source distribution platform (Android). You’re surprised? Really?
Truth be told, I was surprised, too, at first. I shed a tear for the Java community. (Almost literally.) I genuinely hate this sort of behavior, companies suing companies because what was thought of as an open and free platform was treated as open and free, and meanwhile the company suing has no interest in the “open and free” part and wants to make a buck off every use of the platform. I realize that on the surface it’s naturally every company’s best interest to let every activity be a profitable one. Microsoft giving IronRuby the cold shoulder (they no longer have any full-time maintainers of the project) is another example of this. But I hate all that, I really do. These companies—Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and Google—really need to maintain strong rapport with their user base if they want to maintain long-term loyalty.
I sold my iPad and set down my iPhone to switch to Android as soon as Apple killed off support for cross-compiled applications. They lost my loyalty for that. I wonder how many other people are in the same boat as me. As for Oracle, bleh! I could never see “Oracle MySQL” or “Oracle Java” or “Oracle Solaris” being word phrases that really went together, they just didn’t work for me, like taking an orange square lego and forcing it on a play-dough ball, just squishy squishy, it doesn’t fit.
I’m sorry, Java, that you must suffer a rude, foul owner and maintainer. Perhaps another, truly open-sourced and open-licensed platform will come about that we can all agree on as being “good”. Perhaps Google’s Go running on Linux is a start. For once, I am seeing great value in the true meaning of “open source” and in the benefits of GPL and other open-source licenses. It’s really a shame that the Java platform didn’t enjoy such licenses up front, but the world will keep turning, life must go on, and we must keep coding, ideally without getting sued!
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(Note: Opinions expressed in this article and its replies are the opinions of their respective authors and not those of DZone, Inc.)
Comments
Casper Bang replied on Fri, 2010/08/13 - 8:32am
This was probably born out of Sun's suing of Microsoft, but it's remained pretty strong ever since and founded many religious debates where state-of-the-art of technology unfortunately would take a distant second place. The cross-pollination has certainly remained stronger with Microsoft, than the other way around (just listen to an episode of .NET rocks vs. an episode of The Java Posse.
At least now it's out in the open, for those who have not followed the Apache Harmony or Java 7 controversies. However it has to be said that Java actually is more open, quite literally, as you have ALWAYS been able to read (and learn) from the source code in the SDK by simply navigating from your code base to theirs.
Btw. JavaZone made another video with some more throwing mud.
Andrew McVeigh replied on Fri, 2010/08/13 - 9:20am
java is still open source, and covered by the patent guarantee. while the lawsuit isn't great and oracle will never be a particularly good steward, it has more to do with a failure to follow the spec, putting Dalvik outside of the guarantee. the poster perhaps also would like to read up on what open source actually means -- is the source code of .Net available under and OSI approved license?
essentially this is just one big company is suing another over IP. it will end in one company paying money to another to cross license patents. just like MS paid lots of money to Sun a few years ago, and Sun paid lots of money to Kodak a few years before, and... well, you get the picture.
as an aside, with .net you have 2 problems: 1. it's not open source, and 2. it is also covered by many patents. don't think for a minute Microsoft wouldn't sue in the same position.
the real problem is software patents and the ease of being awarded one for something that a twelfth grader could work out on their own given 30 minutes. that is the real problem, and until that goes, noone should be indulging in feelings of shadenfreude. and certainly noone closely aligned to the .Net world...
Fabrizio Giudici replied on Fri, 2010/08/13 - 9:31am
Maarten Djones replied on Fri, 2010/08/13 - 10:04am
Either you're not too intelligent, or you're just looking to get a few people riled up by writing completely moronic things like: "Java is not any more 'Open Source' than .NET is." (in which case, hey look, you succeeded!) Unless you're right, that is. So...
I guess you can point me to the online repository where Microsoft is doing bleeding edge .NET platform development under an OSI approved license, much like Oracle is with JDK 7.
No?
Ok, then how about an older version of the .NET platform, which has been almost 100% open sourced, like JDK 6?
No, again?
Ok then..., how 'bout just a published tarball of the .NET platform code, like SUN did for the JDK for years before it was actually open sourced? C'mon, a tarball is all I'm asking for here...
Still no?
So I guess you're just a little tired of people telling you that, by choosing .NET, you're completely beholden to Microsoft, however good their intentions may be, and you've now seized on this utterly unrelated patent lawsuit to make the completely groundless claim that Java developers are in the exact same position with respect to Oracle?
Yes? Ok, glad we got that sorted out.
As for myself, there are 2 things that bother me. The first is that your blogpost somehow ended up in my DZone RSS feed (and that a grand total of 8 blog posts in 2 years apparently makes you an MVB on the .NET zone). The second is that a lot of people, yourself included, seem to think that theirs is The One True Definition of open source, and that anything that doesn't measure up to it doesn't deserve the qualification.
This is called Stallman Syndrome. Get over it.
Because it leads to weird blogposts where people argue that a patent lawsuit somehow proves that something isn't open source.
Regards,
Maarten
Mark Haniford replied on Fri, 2010/08/13 - 10:31am
Jilles van Gurp replied on Fri, 2010/08/13 - 12:14pm
"Java is not any more “Open Source” than .NET"
Sorry, I believe the technical term is "bullshit". By the OSF definition, it is enough for the source code to be available under OSF endorsed license for a product to be open source. .Net is not available under such a license (other than the independently developed mono, which is only a partial implementation).
Apache Harmony is 100% Apache licensed. It is not Java in the sense of that being a trademarked name and in the sense of Apache not having licensed the Java test suite from Sunnacle (which is not OSS) that would prove it is pretty damn close to being 100% compatible. Other than that it is of course the Java implementation that Google is using in the Apache licensed Android platform which includes the Apache licensed Dalvik virtual machine as well as various Apache and Eclispe licensed development tooling. Is that open source enough for you?
Then of course most of the "real" Java is available under GPL. And if you insist, you can get by pretty well with the 100% GPL icedtea distribution. Or one of the many OSS jvms combined with the gnu classpath implementation.
So yes, Java is more open source. Much more so. 100% in fact. That's not an opinion but a fact. Multiple indpendent OSS implementations exist of which at least two are known to run the bulk of most available Java software.
As for patents, they are a nuisance but they have very little to do with open source licensing which is fundamentally about copyright and not about patents. This despite some attempts to correct this in GPLv3.
As for Oracle behaving like a bully on these topics. Yes, that was very predictable. Duh.
What will be interesting to see in the next few months is how successful they will be. My guess is that Google is sitting on quite a bit of patents that they could use to counter sue and harass Oracle customers with. Of the top of my head such highly relevant (for Oracle) technology as cloud storage, security, indexing & clustering technology come to mind as areas where Google is extremely likely to hold bucket loads of non trivial patents that Oracle is likely to be interested in and infringing upon given the nature of their business.
Read that Oracle license carefully, especially the bit on indemnification. Just because it is closed source doesn't mean that you are immune against lawsuits when you infringe Google's patents by using Oracle's software. Google wouldn't do that of course (being non evil and all), but if they wanted to they could sue Oracle customers in addition to Oracle itself. That's like the nuclear option in patent law suits. Sco tried to play that card and look where they are now.
So, the predictable outcome of this whole mess is an out of court settlement, likely after several years of legal battle. I doubt this will affect either sales of Android devices or the level of endorsement by the many manufacturers depending on it already.
Oracle is in it for the cash and if they can bully Google out of the enterprise market they will happily do it but not at any price. Likely they will settle for cash and a license to selected patents from the before mentioned Google port folio.
The real question is what IBM will do. I'm sure they won't be amused that their biggest competitor is sueing anyone over technology they created (i.e. Apache Harmony). IBM is of course the owner of the worlds largest patent portfolio ...
So, bullshit and hardly the end of the world. Not even the Java world.
Sami Songo replied on Fri, 2010/08/13 - 1:06pm
in response to: jilles
Ivan Ooi replied on Sat, 2010/08/14 - 5:53am
Randy Hobart replied on Sat, 2010/08/14 - 7:52am
Phil H. replied on Sat, 2010/08/14 - 11:00am
Bruce Fancher replied on Sat, 2010/08/14 - 2:08pm
John J. Franey replied on Sat, 2010/08/14 - 2:30pm
However, to run a blog, working knowledge of patent and copyright law is not required and even eschewed. Facts are mere technicalities that obstruct high-hit rates and advertising income. What a country.
Ivan Lazarte replied on Sat, 2010/08/14 - 7:18pm
Liam Knox replied on Sun, 2010/08/15 - 2:34am
That you have chosen to run into Microsoft arms does not really seem a sad loss for the Java world. Thank God for patents, they have ensured Java is by far the most successful language to date
Andrew McVeigh replied on Sun, 2010/08/15 - 1:00pm
in response to: jfraney
sadly, having a working knowledge of the patent system and the patents in your area is actually detrimental to development as it is very difficult to avoid encroaching on the many thousands of technically invalid patents. the reason it is detrimental is that triple damages are avoided for a knowing breach of patents. and if you haven't seen the patents, you cannot be held for a knowing breach. hence, looking at patents is deemed dangerous to a software developer.
that's why linus tovalds doesn't look at (or want to know) any of the patents that linux might collide with: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/linus_pr.html
from the article above:
and that's how broken the system has become. truly a sad state of affairs.
Alex(JAlexoid) ... replied on Tue, 2010/08/17 - 5:22am
in response to: jilles
OpenJDKs GPL v2 also makes sure that patents are freely available for anyones use without fees. GPLv2 is a very anti-patent license.
But, yes, Java IS opensource while .NET is not. A few years back it was not the case, but now it is.
Oracle's lawyers are idiots, because this stirred up a lot of the dormant Oracle hate.
Alex(JAlexoid) ... replied on Tue, 2010/08/17 - 5:26am
in response to: samiup
Hassan Turhal replied on Sun, 2012/01/22 - 12:32pm
The problem I have with this tack is a lack of separation between platform and language.
Both .NET and Java are made up of (at least) two distinct parts.
The platform/library and the language.
I think any argument dealing with openness and "free-ness" should distinguish between these two, because the languages and the platforms have varying degrees of free-ness and openness and standards certifications.
I doubt this lawsuit will go anywhere. Oracle seem to be trying to find ways to monetize their new properties and lawsuits are cheap and easy to file, and often result in a quick settlement. The problem is, this will sour many longtime supporters (even more) on the management of Java. If there's an ongoing threat that Oracle might sue anyone and everyone for using Java in any way they don't like, the open sourcers will have a hard time cozying up to Java any more.