Sun's Overview of Ruby and JRuby

[Veloso]

A very good article
(http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/scripting/jruby_nb6/)
on Ruby is up on Sun's main Java site. It makes it clear that Sun is
working hard to support Ruby and trying to open up the language so
that it can enter new enterprises.

They are up front about their motives and admit in the article: "Sun's
strategy is tied to the assumption that deployment will follow
adoption, and it derives from the belief that businesses will not
deploy important applications or solutions without support. As Sun CEO
Jonathan Schwartz puts it, 'Mindshare gets market share.'"

The article also says:

"'We are actively interested in supporting non-Java technologies such
as PHP, Perl, Python, and Rails on our system and OS platforms,'" says
Tim Bray, director of web technologies and Distinguished Engineer at
Sun. 'While Rails is an excellent framework, Sun is making it faster.
Java technology offers first-rate deployment of Rails on GlassFish
while NetBeans 6.0 offers the best Rails and Ruby programmer tools
available.'"

This strikes me as a case where Sun's enlightened self interest is
serving the open source community.

I wonder: Does anyone think I am being naive about this?

 

[Todd Benson]

A very good article
(http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/scripting/jruby_nb6/)
on Ruby is up on Sun's main Java site. It makes it clear that Sun is
working hard to support Ruby and trying to open up the language so
that it can enter new enterprises.

They are up front about their motives and admit in the article: "Sun's
strategy is tied to the assumption that deployment will follow
adoption, and it derives from the belief that businesses will not
deploy important applications or solutions without support. As Sun CEO
Jonathan Schwartz puts it, 'Mindshare gets market share.'"

The article also says:

"'We are actively interested in supporting non-Java technologies such
as PHP, Perl, Python, and Rails on our system and OS platforms,'" says
Tim Bray, director of web technologies and Distinguished Engineer at
Sun. 'While Rails is an excellent framework, Sun is making it faster.
Java technology offers first-rate deployment of Rails on GlassFish
while NetBeans 6.0 offers the best Rails and Ruby programmer tools
available.'"

This strikes me as a case where Sun's enlightened self interest is
serving the open source community.

I wonder: Does anyone think I am being naive about this?

Sounds simply like intellectual real estate to me. "Hey, look at all
these bright things that these bright people do with our product!"
Your share value goes up.

Todd

 

[thufir]

This strikes me as a case where Sun's enlightened self interest is
serving the open source community.

I wonder: Does anyone think I am being naive about this?

It's all good because Ruby, and, hopefully, someday, Java, will be
GPL'ed. IronRuby is a tad different because the Microsoft VM is closed.
The Java VM is closed (I think) but Java is, or will be, open


-Thufir

 

[Phillip Gawlowski]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

thufir wrote:
| On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:34:54 +0900, Veloso wrote:
|
|
|> This strikes me as a case where Sun's enlightened self interest is
|> serving the open source community.
|>
|> I wonder: Does anyone think I am being naive about this?
|>
|
|
| It's all good because Ruby, and, hopefully, someday, Java, will be
| GPL'ed. IronRuby is a tad different because the Microsoft VM is closed.
| The Java VM is closed (I think) but Java is, or will be, open

Microsoft's VM has an open source implementation (in cooperation with MS
and Novell), in from of the Mono Project.

- -- Phillip Gawlowski

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAkfzVzEACgkQbtAgaoJTgL9irgCgkJRRzgy8f73kYvu2zYD3Vcq1
FAAAoIIelxAutOO8CtniJe3Wqy3zJ/t1
=a0pw
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

 

[Charles Oliver Nutter]

It's all good because Ruby, and, hopefully, someday, Java, will be
GPL'ed. IronRuby is a tad different because the Microsoft VM is closed.
The Java VM is closed (I think) but Java is, or will be, open

Sun's Java VM has been GPL for over a year. I believe the only pieces
remaining non-GPL are bits of code Sun did not have the rights to
open-source, and there's work being done right now to replace them.

http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/faq.jsp

The OpenJDK project is here, and you can download and build it yourself:

http://openjdk.java.net/

Microsoft's CLR, on the other hand, is entirely closed source. Mono is
an open-source port, but it always lags pretty far behind in
compatibility and performance.

- Charlie

 

[Brian Adkins]

Sounds simply like intellectual real estate to me. "Hey, look at all
these bright things that these bright people do with our product!"
Your share value goes up.

Apparently not:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=JAVA&t=6m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

 

[Michal Suchanek]

IronRuby is a tad different because the Microsoft VM is closed. The Java
VM is closed (I think) but Java is, or will be, open

Sun's Java VM has been GPL for over a year. I believe the only pieces
remaining non-GPL are bits of code Sun did not have the rights to
open-source, and there's work being done right now to replace them.

http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/faq.jsp

The OpenJDK project is here, and you can download and build it yourself:

http://openjdk.java.net/

Microsoft's CLR, on the other hand, is entirely closed source. Mono is an
open-source port, but it always lags pretty far behind in compatibility and
performance.

Well, the situation with Java is much better than it used to be. The
code is now opensource (mostly), and this will hopefully make it
possible to run Java on more exotic platforms releiving the most
painful grief with the proprietary platform.

However, Sun has made sure their implementation is the only one even
if opensource.

The specs used to have a very onerous license, and this has not
changed much. They are now free for "evaluation" - basically
discussion and developing in Java, and additionally you can use them
to write a complete tested independent implementation.
It is not clear what the status is when your implementation is
incomplete or does not pass the test, and the tests are very
proprietary, require an agreement in writing, and are normally
licensed only for OpenJDK - the Sun implementation (or to commercial
partners I guess).

Thanks

Michal

 

[Phillip Gawlowski]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Michal Suchanek wrote:
|
| The specs used to have a very onerous license, and this has not
| changed much. They are now free for "evaluation" - basically
| discussion and developing in Java, and additionally you can use them
| to write a complete tested independent implementation.
| It is not clear what the status is when your implementation is
| incomplete or does not pass the test, and the tests are very
| proprietary, require an agreement in writing, and are normally
| licensed only for OpenJDK - the Sun implementation (or to commercial
| partners I guess).

You get sued by Sun, stop developing your JDK, and instead develop your
own virtual machine an call it CLR/.NET?

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1998/11-17sun.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J++#Litigation_against_J.2B.2B

- -- Phillip Gawlowski
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAkf057UACgkQbtAgaoJTgL/bXACdFDuojDezRqJgnU2FTjJE5KN5
m5oAn3JCHMjmY+rDlClHEzkoBIk56h32
=8+U0
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

 

[Charles Oliver Nutter]

Well, the situation with Java is much better than it used to be. The
code is now opensource (mostly), and this will hopefully make it
possible to run Java on more exotic platforms releiving the most
painful grief with the proprietary platform.

However, Sun has made sure their implementation is the only one even
if opensource.

The only one? You do know there's dozens of JVM implementations for just
about every platform imaginable, right?

- Charlie

 

[Michal Suchanek]

The only one? You do know there's dozens of JVM implementations for just
about every platform imaginable, right?

Sure there are. Not dozens but a few at least. They are either
commercial (and bought the test suite license and probably license for
large parts of the implementation from Sun, and work only on that
platform) or don't work.

And the likely reason is that you cannot use the test suite, and
consequently the spec to develop an alternative opensource
implementation. Or why else would glibc be one of the most advanced
libcs and gij one of the poorest JVMs?

Pragmatically the OpenJDK should be free enough once finished.
However, Java is still not a free platform as it does not have a free
standard. As opposed to, say HTML or ECMAscript which are free for
everyone to implement.

Thanks

Michal

 

[Rick DeNatale]

Sure there are. Not dozens but a few at least. They are either
commercial (and bought the test suite license and probably license for
large parts of the implementation from Sun, and work only on that
platform) or don't work.

And the likely reason is that you cannot use the test suite, and
consequently the spec to develop an alternative opensource
implementation. Or why else would glibc be one of the most advanced
libcs and gij one of the poorest JVMs?

Pragmatically the OpenJDK should be free enough once finished.
However, Java is still not a free platform as it does not have a free
standard. As opposed to, say HTML or ECMAscript which are free for
everyone to implement.

I think that it's interesting that the community of Ruby implementers
(including Sun thanks to Charles, Thomas and Co.) are striving to
openly develop a Ruby 'specification' in the form of a growing test
suite, while a test suite exists for Java but it's closely held by Sun
and not openly available.