adam bien's blog

Do we really need opensource Java? 📎

On the JavaOne Sun announced opensourcing of Java - and everyone was and is excited. But I do not see any big advantages or changes to the current state:
  1. I cannot remember JDK 1.1, but from JDK 1.2 I always work with the source to debug Swing etc. So the framework/library source was always "open" and accessible.
  2. There are already alternatives to Sun implementations. JRockit (great for serverside), IBM (often needed for IBM-products), kaffe (a clean room implementation), esmertec (useful for embedded devices), or harmony etc. So what the difference to opensource?
  3. If you like, you can participate, and initiate a JSR. In case the idea is good enough, you could even influence the Java SE or EE. I also did it, but had to withdraw my JSR-193 - because of political "forces" :-).
  4. You can already contribute code to the JDK and fix bugs.
  5. We had once to provide an JDK implementation for an unsupported OS. We took kaffe (here is also the whole native code available) and simply did it.
I see one big danger of opensourcing Java: stability and compatibility of different implementations.
So from pragmatic point of view we have already the advantage of an opensource project, with no drawbacks.
So everyone seems to be excited - I'm only curious :-)