[gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[Greg Tassone]

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For those that have been asleep/hiding/etc. and haven't heard the news yet:

Sun has finally decided/confirmed that it will release the Java platform under 
the GPL.  Furthermore, they've decided that they will do this for the entire 
platform under their ownership; including SE, ME, EE, etc.

The JavaC and HotSpot code are scheduled for release within the next 24 hours; 
the VM implementations are scheduled for release early 2007 (by March).

Richard Stallman is reportedly happy with the decision, and will be endorsing 
the move via video at a press conference with Sun some hours from now.

This is significant news < /  understatement >.  This is the best-of-the-best 
scenario I anticipated, but wasn't sure that Sun would actually do it.  IMHO, 
this move positions Java to grow leaps-and-bounds in all sectors; I think its 
growth will surprise many.

For more details:

ZDNet Blog:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/index.php?p=199

Slashdot article:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/08/0221255
-------

Woot!

~ Greg

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Re: [gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[Xavier MOGHRABI]

That's really a good news that I was waiting for a long time !

Java would be now considered as a standard part of any Linux distribution such 
as other languages.

Regards

-- 
Xavier MOGHRABI - Consortium ObjectWeb
Jabber: moghrabi@jabber.objectweb.org
Phone: +33 4 76 61 52 35

Le lundi 13 novembre 2006 09:08, Greg Tassone a écrit :
> For those that have been asleep/hiding/etc. and haven't heard the news yet:
>
> Sun has finally decided/confirmed that it will release the Java platform
> under the GPL.  Furthermore, they've decided that they will do this for the
> entire platform under their ownership; including SE, ME, EE, etc.
>
> The JavaC and HotSpot code are scheduled for release within the next 24
> hours; the VM implementations are scheduled for release early 2007 (by
> March).
>
> Richard Stallman is reportedly happy with the decision, and will be
> endorsing the move via video at a press conference with Sun some hours from
> now.
>
> This is significant news < /  understatement >.  This is the
> best-of-the-best scenario I anticipated, but wasn't sure that Sun would
> actually do it.  IMHO, this move positions Java to grow leaps-and-bounds in
> all sectors; I think its growth will surprise many.
>
> For more details:
>
> ZDNet Blog:
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/index.php?p=199
>
> Slashdot article:
> http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/08/0221255
> -------
>
> Woot!
>
> ~ Greg


-- 
gentoo-java@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[Boris Dušek]

Hi Greg,

could you please clarify what do you mean by "News at 11:00"? The official Sun 
site http://www.sun.com/opensource/java tells the live podcasts of the press 
conference will start at 09:30 Pacific Time.

Thanks,
Boris

On Monday 13 November 2006 09:08, Greg Tassone wrote:
> For those that have been asleep/hiding/etc. and haven't heard the news yet:
>
> Sun has finally decided/confirmed that it will release the Java platform
> under the GPL.  Furthermore, they've decided that they will do this for the
> entire platform under their ownership; including SE, ME, EE, etc.
>
> The JavaC and HotSpot code are scheduled for release within the next 24
> hours; the VM implementations are scheduled for release early 2007 (by
> March).
>
> Richard Stallman is reportedly happy with the decision, and will be
> endorsing the move via video at a press conference with Sun some hours from
> now.
>
> This is significant news < /  understatement >.  This is the
> best-of-the-best scenario I anticipated, but wasn't sure that Sun would
> actually do it.  IMHO, this move positions Java to grow leaps-and-bounds in
> all sectors; I think its growth will surprise many.
>
> For more details:
>
> ZDNet Blog:
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/index.php?p=199
>
> Slashdot article:
> http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/08/0221255
> -------
>
> Woot!
>
> ~ Greg
-- 
gentoo-java@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[Samuel Penn]

On Monday 13 November 2006 12:07, Boris Dušek wrote:
> Hi Greg,
>
> could you please clarify what do you mean by "News at 11:00"? The official
> Sun site http://www.sun.com/opensource/java tells the live podcasts of the
> press conference will start at 09:30 Pacific Time.

It's just a reasonably common English phrase, probably come from a
time when the main news show of the day was at 11 (at least in the UK).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11_o'clock_news

However, I wish they'd always give the GMT times for these things,
since I've no idea what the current time difference is for PT.

-- 
Be seeing you,                         http://www.glendale.org.uk
Sam.                        Mail/IM (Jabber): sam@glendale.org.uk 

-- 
gentoo-java@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[David Herron]

Yes.  I am very happy we are taking this step.  And it will certainly  
make it easier for you guys to incorporate Java on your platform.   
Well, at least for the platforms Hotspot supports...

- David




On Nov 13, 2006, at 12:08 AM, Greg Tassone wrote:

> For those that have been asleep/hiding/etc. and haven't heard the  
> news yet:
>
> Sun has finally decided/confirmed that it will release the Java  
> platform under
> the GPL.  Furthermore, they've decided that they will do this for  
> the entire
> platform under their ownership; including SE, ME, EE, etc.
>
> The JavaC and HotSpot code are scheduled for release within the  
> next 24 hours;
> the VM implementations are scheduled for release early 2007 (by  
> March).
>
> Richard Stallman is reportedly happy with the decision, and will be  
> endorsing
> the move via video at a press conference with Sun some hours from now.
>
> This is significant news < /  understatement >.  This is the best- 
> of-the-best
> scenario I anticipated, but wasn't sure that Sun would actually do  
> it.  IMHO,
> this move positions Java to grow leaps-and-bounds in all sectors; I  
> think its
> growth will surprise many.
>
> For more details:
>
> ZDNet Blog:
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/index.php?p=199
>
> Slashdot article:
> http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/08/0221255
> -------
>
> Woot!
>
> ~ Greg

-- 
gentoo-java@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[David Herron]

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Karl, I agree completely.

We have been looking at this question for some time.  Clearly in the JDK 
sources we have code that supports Linux, and we have code which 
supports SPARC, but not these two at the same time.  It turns out to be 
a little difficult to bring those two together.

I would think that in the not too far distant future there could be 
project(s) like you say working together in the openjdk project to 
support the JDK on new architectures and maybe new operating systems.  
e.g. The Free BSD team and that ilk might want to collaborate with us 
more directly now that our licenses are more open.

How would *you* prefer that the collaboration would work?

I know our preference is for the collaboration to be in the bounds of 
the openjdk project site.  The governance and contribution procedures 
are a work in progress at the moment.  You can see on the openjdk 
project site the contribution process.  So, e.g., if you had a 
Gentoo-specific source change to make, you could submit it through that 
contribution process.

- David Herron



Karl Trygve Kalleberg wrote:
> David Herron wrote:
>   
>> Yes.  I am very happy we are taking this step.  And it will certainly
>> make it easier for you guys to incorporate Java on your platform.  Well,
>> at least for the platforms Hotspot supports...
>>     
>
> I would think that major parts of Hotspot would be reusable for getting
> the Sun VM running of Linux on SPARC as well (given that you obviously
> have Solaris on SPARC covered pretty well).
>
> There seems to be more people than us who're interested in getting the
> VM running on more of the architectures we support in Gentoo, so this
> will most likely happen as time goes by. Heck, one would even think that
> various CPU vendors would be interested in helping out with some
> engineering knowledge, as they do with GCC.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> -- Karl T
>   

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Re: [gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[Andrew Cowie]

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On Mon, 2006-11-13 at 00:08 -0800, Greg Tassone wrote:
> For more details:

Since a number of people seem to be asking on IRC what will happen to
the existing Free Java projects, I would note that the Classpath hackers
have given an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response. Read
http://planet.classpath.org/

AfC
Sydney

-- 
Andrew Frederick Cowie

Technology strategy, managing change, establishing procedures,
and executing successful upgrades to mission critical business
infrastructure.

http://www.operationaldynamics.com/

Sydney   New York   Toronto   London

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Re: [gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[Karl Trygve Kalleberg]

David Herron wrote:
> Karl, I agree completely.
> 
> We have been looking at this question for some time.  Clearly in the JDK
> sources we have code that supports Linux, and we have code which
> supports SPARC, but not these two at the same time.  It turns out to be
> a little difficult to bring those two together.

I appreciate the engineering difficulties here, but I don't think they
are insurmountable given some time, motivation and elbow grease.

> I would think that in the not too far distant future there could be
> project(s) like you say working together in the openjdk project to
> support the JDK on new architectures and maybe new operating systems. 
> e.g. The Free BSD team and that ilk might want to collaborate with us
> more directly now that our licenses are more open.
> 
> How would *you* prefer that the collaboration would work?
> 
> I know our preference is for the collaboration to be in the bounds of
> the openjdk project site.  The governance and contribution procedures
> are a work in progress at the moment.  You can see on the openjdk
> project site the contribution process.  So, e.g., if you had a
> Gentoo-specific source change to make, you could submit it through that
> contribution process.

My experience with other projects, such as Eclipse, tells me that it
would be preferable to have one common repository upstream (that's with
you guys) for collecting and sharing patches used in the packaging process.

It turns out that many patches used by distro A are also very useful for
 distro B -- this is a pretty established fact by now. Another
established fact is that we (the package maintainers on various distros)
spend a lot of time digging through each other's repos and home pages
looking for interesting patches for common problems. This is pure waste
of time.

With Eclipse, we're combating this with a new project, see
http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/linux-distro/

Basically, the Eclipse Linux Distro project is a staging ground for
fixes/patches/improvements to Eclipse that are specific to Linux (I
don't think we're against *BSD in any way -- they've just not been part
of the process so far).

The patches that end up in the Eclipse "Linux Distro" project will not
be automatically placed into the main Eclipse code base. They will most
likely simmer in the Eclipse Linux Distro for some time, and during that
time, it's up to the various distros whether they want to apply it or not.

Some patches might eventually make it into the main Eclipse code base,
many won't. But even for those that won't, chances are that they'll be
maintained as the main Eclipse code base evolves, since they are often
shared across distros, and because maintainers from the various distros
have accesss to the Linux Distro code base.

Perhaps a similar model will work for the JDK (which is our primary
concern ATM -- other projects like J2EE might follow), say a "JDK Linux
Distro" subproject of the OpenJDK.

However, it is vitally important to keep the barriers for accessing and
working on the code base in such a JDK Linux Distro low. I wouldn't mind
having to sign the necessary CAs to commit to the JDK Linux Distro
subproject, but I *would* mind if some Sun engineer needs to bless my
code every time I have a patch to share with the other packagers. "Patch
blessing" should only be necessary when code is taken from the JDK Linux
Distro staging ground and put into the OpenJDK proper.


Since the Eclipse Linux Distro project is still in its infancy, it's too
early to tell how well this model works, but if I were in the Sun JDK
team, I'd keep an eye out for it and see how well it turns out to work.

"A beginning is a very delicate time", as some fictitious princess once
said.


Cheers,

-- Karl T
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[David Herron]

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Karl,

Thank you for informing me of this Eclipse working group.  I wasn't 
aware of it.  And reading the page you mentioned was very very very 
hauntingly like the issues that led us to creating the DLJ license and 
the jdk-distros project.

The jdk-distros project is meant to be a staging ground for some of the 
linux-specific bits and documentation.  However it's focused entirely on 
installers, and not the JDK code itself.  The jdk-distros project uses 
the BSD license to facilitate even more fluid code sharing.

You are probably talking about source changes, not installer changes..?

The current contribution process is a work in progress and we know it's 
not the final one.  We plan to develop a better contribution process 
over time.  The process that's there is very similar to the process we 
use in-house that Sun engineers go through on every change we make to 
Java SE.  We take stability as a very high attribute and the process we 
follow involves a lot of peer review and unit/etc testing before it is 
allowed into the central source repository.

But, that said, any future contribution process is open for discussion.  
The appropriate place to take that is the mailing lists and/or forums on 
java.net.

We are open to, in the future, having external contributors with direct 
putback rights.  And that, too, is a topic for discussion.

BTW, one goal for the jdk-distros project was for it to hold the 
installer scripts for each distribution using the DLJ.  The 
Debian/Ubuntu scripts are in the jdk-distros repository.  The Gentoo 
scripts could be, if you desire, if there is any need for it. 

The purpose was along the lines of what you have discussed.  To 
facilitate sharing between the distribution makers of the installation 
procedures.

- David Herron



Karl Trygve Kalleberg wrote:
> David Herron wrote:
>   
>> Karl, I agree completely.
>>
>> We have been looking at this question for some time.  Clearly in the JDK
>> sources we have code that supports Linux, and we have code which
>> supports SPARC, but not these two at the same time.  It turns out to be
>> a little difficult to bring those two together.
>>     
>
> I appreciate the engineering difficulties here, but I don't think they
> are insurmountable given some time, motivation and elbow grease.
>
>   
>> I would think that in the not too far distant future there could be
>> project(s) like you say working together in the openjdk project to
>> support the JDK on new architectures and maybe new operating systems. 
>> e.g. The Free BSD team and that ilk might want to collaborate with us
>> more directly now that our licenses are more open.
>>
>> How would *you* prefer that the collaboration would work?
>>
>> I know our preference is for the collaboration to be in the bounds of
>> the openjdk project site.  The governance and contribution procedures
>> are a work in progress at the moment.  You can see on the openjdk
>> project site the contribution process.  So, e.g., if you had a
>> Gentoo-specific source change to make, you could submit it through that
>> contribution process.
>>     
>
> My experience with other projects, such as Eclipse, tells me that it
> would be preferable to have one common repository upstream (that's with
> you guys) for collecting and sharing patches used in the packaging process.
>
> It turns out that many patches used by distro A are also very useful for
>  distro B -- this is a pretty established fact by now. Another
> established fact is that we (the package maintainers on various distros)
> spend a lot of time digging through each other's repos and home pages
> looking for interesting patches for common problems. This is pure waste
> of time.
>
> With Eclipse, we're combating this with a new project, see
> http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/linux-distro/
>
> Basically, the Eclipse Linux Distro project is a staging ground for
> fixes/patches/improvements to Eclipse that are specific to Linux (I
> don't think we're against *BSD in any way -- they've just not been part
> of the process so far).
>
> The patches that end up in the Eclipse "Linux Distro" project will not
> be automatically placed into the main Eclipse code base. They will most
> likely simmer in the Eclipse Linux Distro for some time, and during that
> time, it's up to the various distros whether they want to apply it or not.
>
> Some patches might eventually make it into the main Eclipse code base,
> many won't. But even for those that won't, chances are that they'll be
> maintained as the main Eclipse code base evolves, since they are often
> shared across distros, and because maintainers from the various distros
> have accesss to the Linux Distro code base.
>
> Perhaps a similar model will work for the JDK (which is our primary
> concern ATM -- other projects like J2EE might follow), say a "JDK Linux
> Distro" subproject of the OpenJDK.
>
> However, it is vitally important to keep the barriers for accessing and
> working on the code base in such a JDK Linux Distro low. I wouldn't mind
> having to sign the necessary CAs to commit to the JDK Linux Distro
> subproject, but I *would* mind if some Sun engineer needs to bless my
> code every time I have a patch to share with the other packagers. "Patch
> blessing" should only be necessary when code is taken from the JDK Linux
> Distro staging ground and put into the OpenJDK proper.
>
>
> Since the Eclipse Linux Distro project is still in its infancy, it's too
> early to tell how well this model works, but if I were in the Sun JDK
> team, I'd keep an eye out for it and see how well it turns out to work.
>
> "A beginning is a very delicate time", as some fictitious princess once
> said.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> -- Karl T
>   

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Re: [gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[Karl Trygve Kalleberg]

Hi David

> The jdk-distros project is meant to be a staging ground for some of the
> linux-specific bits and documentation.  However it's focused entirely on
> installers, and not the JDK code itself.  The jdk-distros project uses
> the BSD license to facilitate even more fluid code sharing.
> 
> You are probably talking about source changes, not installer changes..?

Yes, I am referring to inevitable patches required to get the JDK built
from source code, since that is what we want to do as soon as we can get
around to it -- build the JDK from source code instead of using the
Sun-provided DLJ binaries (of course, first all of the JDK must be
there, c.f. the encumbered parts of the library).

In the past, we had a from-source ebuild for the JDK, but given the
(old!) licensing conditions, none of the current Gentoo Java developers
wanted to become contaminated by looking at the JDK source (this is now
a thing of the past! waaaay!). In our from-source ebuild, we did various
patching (I don't know the specifics) of the JDK source to get it built
on Gentoo.

Similarly, for Eclipse, we've had to do all kind of strange code
acrobatics to get it compiling even remotely properly on Linux. Over the
years, Eclipse has been able to use the Motif and Gtk+ windowing
toolkits, the GNOME and KDE VFS, the Mozilla embedded browser component
(libgtkembedmoz), and it has been rather picky about which Java
compilers and JDKs it will build with. Since Eclipse doesn't use
autoconf and friends, and some of the build paths have even been
hardcoded to fixed paths in their buildfarm, it's sometimes been a bit
icky to get everything compiling smoothly for our users.

Take the example of the embedded HTML component in Eclipse, which uses
the Gecko rendering engine. Upstream, this component has historically
either been built against the Gecko SDK or one of the Mozilla 1.x stable
branch, but upstream doesn't maintain compatibility for both. So, we've
had to patch in support for compiling Eclipse on systems where only
Firefox is installed (and this is possible, even though the label
advises against it;).

Since I've not yet familiarized myself with the JDK source base, I
cannot offer specific examples of where we would need to patch your
build scripts, but I am sure we'll run into something pretty quickly,
and so will the Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu guys, I am sure.

> The current contribution process is a work in progress and we know it's
> not the final one.  We plan to develop a better contribution process
> over time.  The process that's there is very similar to the process we
> use in-house that Sun engineers go through on every change we make to
> Java SE.  We take stability as a very high attribute and the process we
> follow involves a lot of peer review and unit/etc testing before it is
> allowed into the central source repository.

That is perfectly understandable, and I would have it no other way. Your
goal is to ship stable products and be the primary care takers of the
JDK code base.

What we need is a place and a forum where we can share build system
patches and fixes (and sometimes, the patches may affect more than just
the build system -- even you guys make a few mistakes and incorrect
assumptions in your code now and again;).

> But, that said, any future contribution process is open for discussion. 
> The appropriate place to take that is the mailing lists and/or forums on
> java.net.
> 
> We are open to, in the future, having external contributors with direct
> putback rights.  And that, too, is a topic for discussion.

I think I should be clear that I'm not asking for you to loosen your
standards when it comes to the commit privileges on the OpenJDK
repository. I do see the need for an arena with a code repo, a wiki, a
mailing list where the JDK packagers on the various distros can share
code, ideas, gripes and experience.

> BTW, one goal for the jdk-distros project was for it to hold the
> installer scripts for each distribution using the DLJ.  The
> Debian/Ubuntu scripts are in the jdk-distros repository.  The Gentoo
> scripts could be, if you desire, if there is any need for it. 

The jdk-distros project may indeed be exactly what we're looking for
here. I don't think that there's any point in us putting our ebuilds
into this repo, however, because they would grow stale in a matter of
days -- as you know, we try to maintain all our installation scripts
(i.e. ebuilds) in the Portage tree, so that they're always and instantly
available to our users.

Any patches and fixes that we eventually apply to the JDK built system,
however, are candidates for inclusion into jdk-distros.

> The purpose was along the lines of what you have discussed.  To
> facilitate sharing between the distribution makers of the installation
> procedures.

Perhaps expanding the mandate for jdk-distros is useful, then, to also
include build system patches for the OpenJDK.

Since Gentoo is "from source"-outfit, our focus will shift towards
source drops of the JDK as these become available (hopefully some time
next year) and Java 1.7 draws closer to a release. I anticipate that we
will keep Sun-provided binaries for 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7, and probably even
future versions in the years to come, but our priority has always been
and will always be source-based packages.

(But I'm not the cat-herder around here anymore, so my thoughts on the
binary/source issue are just speculations based on hard-earned
experience, and should not be taken as any official statement on behalf
of the Gentoo Java Team.)


Cheers,

-- Karl T
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