Eitan Suez's Blog

That Open Source Feelin'

I wanted to wait for the dust to settle a bit before airing my comments on the now dated news that Sun Microsystems has open-sourced Java.

I recall clearly a period of activity on java.net where many (including me) voiced their desire to see Java open-sourced.

Now that this has happened I'm amazed at the correlation of this event with my own experiences. In my career I've open-sourced two projects: ashkelon and JMatter.

Each time the process of letting go and embracing open source was very difficult, even arduous. I took what felt like forever to arrive at the decision. Surprisingly after the decision was made, the feeling was very positive, very rewarding: that I'd shared my work with the community. The same thoughts reverberate: "why did it take me so long to do this?" I believe the reward is of equal or greater magnitude to the effort; that is, it's worth doing.

With my first project, I hadn't yet read Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar. I was a novice when it came to managing an open source project. I still regret that I wasn't able to make the project flourish, though I don't regret for a moment open-sourcing the project. Many used my code and some sent me improvements. There was also at the time an obstacle to this project: the fact that one could not legally publish online javadocs for Java's APIs.

Another correlating fact was my choice of license. Both my projects are available under the GPL. So it's a great feeling of validation to see that Sun has also chosen this license.

One odd way to describe how I feel about Sun open-sourcing Java is that the positive feeling is of equal magnitude to the negative feeling I had when hearing the news of the Novell ship sinking. It gives me hope for the future.

In my mind the parallels that exist between the events that play out in real life: the battle being waged between the forces of open and close code, and between the Star Wars saga are striking. I don't mean to sound cheesy here, but we see time and again how sometimes organizations exert their force by proxy, sometimes anonymously (as in the case of SCO).

One item I've been ranting about to friends (and on this site) for too long is how companies can get away for charging people for software they don't use. Each time I purchase a notebook computer and quickly wipe the disk clean to install Ubuntu, I pay the famous "microsoft tax" for a license of windows I did not ask for.

I would like publicly thank Sun Microsystems for choosing to side with its community, to side with the open-source community on Java. I sincerely hope that a few years from now Sun will be able to say: "we made a good decision; and it has paid off handsomely."

Comments

• I guess if we are in some StarWarsian conflict between Free and NonFree, I have to ask which Episode are we at in the saga? Is it episode 4, with the Death Star being blown up and everyone is happy? I guess that means episode 5 is next... yikes.

  leouser

  Posted by: leouser on December 04, 2006 at 12:18 PM

• You've had way too much open source kool aide. Sun should be FREE to do as they please with their property. They've made a more or less irreversible decision that was mandated by a small but vocal faction of users who share a common ideology. Fortunately, they seem to have gone about it in a way that works for almost everyone. However, I believe general dissatisfaction with Java and the unwritten law that nothing in open source is cool for long (and open source is all about what is popular today) will lead to competition from projects based directly on the open JDK. Sure these projects won't be called Java, but no one will care.

  Posted by: rabbe on December 05, 2006 at 08:28 AM

• rabbe: Where did I say that Sun is not FREE to do as it pleases with its property?? Maybe next time, I will just post a single sentence: "Thanks Sun for open-sourcing Java (disclaimer for rabbe: Sun is FREE to do as it pleases with its property)."

  Posted by: eitan on December 05, 2006 at 09:07 AM

• here's the blog where i say explicitly that sun is free to do as it pleases with its property.

  Posted by: eitan on December 05, 2006 at 09:31 AM

• GPL sucks, just like Linux. Linux is for people who want to make there own life hard and others too.

  Why does everything has to be GPL? Accepts that there are more open source licences.

  Linux has to die!!!

  Posted by: carmello on December 05, 2006 at 01:55 PM

• carmello - unless you pay someone, you can't dictate the license that they choose. You say that Linux is for people that want to make their life hard - does it say anything about the license to its source code? Would it be easier to use under BSD? Nobody makes you use GPL (or other licensed) software - if you don't like the license, find some other product or write your own. If you absolutely have to use that code, be respectful to what its owners requested and pay the price.

  Posted by: kirillcool on December 05, 2006 at 02:17 PM

• kirillcool,

  But that is what linux people do, screaming like little kids until they get what they want. Even Microsoft is more friendly too Java then linux people. Linux people make your life hard with shell scripts and hard to understand config files and such and also try to lock you into Linux.

  Java is platform indepent so to let other people enjoy your software make it so they can easaly use it and build it on multipul platforms.

  BSD or Apache licence would be a much better choice, I also develop under the BSD licence.

  "be respectful to what its owners requested and pay the price" ? Infection my laptop with Linux or any other gpl virus stuff is a price I don't want to pay.

  Posted by: carmello on December 06, 2006 at 11:30 AM

• let's stop discussing dependency inversion and start talking about logic inversion. "a price i don't want to pay????" at least use a different metaphor, please. here are people producing free software (and you don't have to eat it) and all they ask for is that you keep it free and open. then someone comes along who pays for software without source code all the while complaining that the free stuff is too expensive. i know this last comment didn't even deserve a reply, but you got the better of me.

  Posted by: eitan on December 07, 2006 at 01:14 PM

• eitan,

  Free and open may sound good but gpl and linux are the dark side of open source. Why does everything has to be open and free, what is wrong with close source software where you have to pay for? And there are people who want to make some money with there software, is anything wrong with that?

  When I see code that is written by a linux user I see mostly bad code that is hard to understand, lots of things that can be done easyer. Hard to understand config files and shell scripts. Why try to lock in people into linux, so, no real freedom.

  When I write open source software I write it in Java and use ant so you are free to choose your favorit OS, Windows, Linux, MacOS, Solaris. So I try to prevent lock-ins, more then people from the gpl/linux world.

  Its so stupid that Java has to be open source because of linux, Sun did something very stupid, to listen to some screaming kiddies.

  Posted by: carmello on December 08, 2006 at 03:58 PM

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