Hans Muller's Blog

March 2004 Archives

GNOME Linux Desktop Community Considers Java

Earlier this week Havoc Pennington, who's responsible for Red Hat's desktop group and is the founder of freedesktop.org, published an article inviting debate about future GNOME Linux Desktop development called "Java, Mono, or C++" ( http://ometer.com/desktop-language.html).

Mono is an open source project sponsored by Novell to build a clone of Microsoft's .NET platform for Linux. Mono supporters would like to see it become the runtime on top of which the GNOME desktop and desktop applications are based (here's a figure from the Mono project web site). This is a controversial topic, in fact at the most recent meeting of the GNOME Advisory Board it was considered too divisive to indulge a discussion. Havoc's blog entry brings the discussion into the great wide open and it has inspired responses and discussion all over the net.

Historically, Java has not been incorporated in free software projects like GNOME because the Java license and standards bodies value cross platform portability over giving developers the right to fork the Java platform at their whim. Although this hasn't changed, Havoc's proposal advocates using Java within the limits of what's supported by the GNU Classpath project. Havoc's proposal allowed that GNOME developers could use other Java implementations. You can be sure that Sun will continue to ship the complete, compatible implementations of the latest Java standards.

All in all we're happy that the discussion about growing the set of acceptable programming technology choices for GNOME's developers is underway and that Java is a contender. There are huge advantages to building large applications and systems using modern, object oriented, garbage collected, secure, etc. programming platforms. The Java community has more than eight years experience doing so. We're not pushing Java as the underpinnings for everything in GNOME, just as an alternative platform for Linux desktop developers who want some portability with their modern runtime.

Java is already being widely used on Linux for both server and desktop work. For example, a recent Evans Data Linux survey showed that 65% of developers do some of their work in Java. Java is also heavily used in open source projects, there are over 11,000 of them on sourceforge today (roll-up by language is here). And Java is doing well on the desktop. From tools for developers like NetBeans, JBuilder, or IntelliJ's IDEA to consumer file sharing favorites like Limewire and Morpheus (400,000 downloads a week!), developers are producing thousands of free and commercial desktop applications. It would be a better world if some of those developers could have their software included with GNOME.

I've read much of the feedback that Havoc's blog generated on slashdot.org, and gnomedesktop.org, and elsewhere. To the extent all of that represents the voice of the Linux desktop community, I think it's safe to say that the community doesn't speak with one voice on this issue. On the other hand, I saw remarkably little enthusiasm for making GNOME depend on Mono. To most developers, the thought of defeating Microsoft's desktop software market dominance is inspiring. However doing so by attempting to clone and track the .NET platform's every mutation feels like an unnatural act and most of the feedback that I read characterized the idea as repugnant. Java isn't a clone of Microsoft's technology (in fact if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we're blushing), it's a better alternative with a community of millions of developers. I hope the GNOME community doesn't fall into Microsoft's "clever trap".

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.