Re: Why FC4 using the Jpackage 1.4.2 Java?

From: Ernest L. Williams Jr. (ernesto_at_ornl.gov)
Date: 06/27/05

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    Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 10:27:58 -0400
To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list@redhat.com>

    On Sat, 2005-06-25 at 12:55 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
    > On Sat, Jun 25, 2005 at 12:50:48PM -0400, Ernest L. Williams Jr. wrote:
    > > > Sun's Java isn't free - period. Then live with the Java FC4 ships with
    > > > in Core.
    > > What about the java distro from IBM? Is that one open-source?
    >
    > Nope. No open source JVM currently exists.

    I checked your above statement with one of my trusted colleagues.
    Here is what I find:
    ===========================================================================
    The statement that "Sun's Java isnt even slightly open source" is
    clearly an exaggeration. Here are the facts:
    1) You can register with Sun and go to Sun's Java sight and freely
    download the full source code for the JVMs that they distribute. Here
    is the
    link: http://www.sun.com/software/communitysource/j2se/java2/download.xml
    2) Developers can join for free Sun's Java community development program
    to contribute code to the Java community.
    Here is the link: http://java.sun.com/developer/products/java2cs/
    3) Other companies use this source code to build their own JVMs.
    4) What is smart about this approach is that the JVMs can be tailored to
    run the Java code optimally on the specific platform. It uses runtime
    optimization to shift a lot of responsibility to the JVM. If you run
    your applications on multiple platforms this makes a lot of sense. It
    relieves the developer of having to make platform specific
    considerations and optimizations in their code and places this strictly
    into the hands of the JVM where it belongs. Developers can focus on
    building solutions and let the experts deal with platform specific
    optimization and other issues.
    5) Sun has the ultimate say and reserves the right to control what code
    gets accepted into the official Java distribution.
    6) It isn't Java unless it meets the licensing requirements set forth by
    Sun. This ensures platform independence and a consistent definition of
    what defines Java.
    7) I think the licensing terms are quite reasonable especially given the
    resources that Sun commits to it. Like most community projects, not
    everyone will get what they want. Splintering the community doesn't
    seem wise to me.

    Java has broad community support. The openness and freeness of Java has
    allowed for its wide adoption. Just consider the large number of J2EE
    products. There is a huge number of 100% pure Java libraries that are
    freely distributed and open source. Pure Java is a stable and supported
    solution. What we see are people trying to take advantage of Java's
    popularity and then splinter off their own variant (which is not legally
    Java) to get what they want. Java is by its pure nature platform
    independent (not just cross-platform). This allows you to distribute
    code without recompiling. The individual JVMs are required to meet
    certain restrictions so as to maintain platform independence and
    compatibility. This allows applications to be posted on a server and
    run without modification on Linux, Mac, Windows and Solaris machines and
    any other JVM compliant platform.

    >
    > > Well, anyway I think a JVM is unnecessary overhead!! I would prefer
    > > native code; so maybe I should stick with FC4's java distro.
    >
    > It's actually pretty amazingly efficient. The perceived slowness of Java
    > comes from the historically horrible GUI libraries.
    >
    > > Now is FC4's java distro basically GCJ (from the GNU Compiler
    > > Collection)?
    >
    > Yes.
    >
    > --
    > Matthew Miller mattdm@mattdm.org <http://www.mattdm.org/>
    > Boston University Linux ------> <http://linux.bu.edu/>
    > Current office temperature: 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
    > 

    -- 
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