Posted on 05/24/2006 9:32:43 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The Curious Incident of Sun in the Night-Time
~ by Richard Stallman
Our community has been abuzz with the rumor that Sun has made its implementation Java free software (or "open source"). Community leaders even publicly thanked Sun for its contribution. What is Sun's new contribution to the FLOSS community?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing--and that's what makes the response to this non-incident so curious.
Sun's Java implementation remains proprietary software, just as before. It doesn't come close to meeting the criteria for free software, or the similar but slightly looser criteria for open source. Its source code is available only under an NDA.
So what did Sun actually do? It allowed more convenient redistribution of the binaries of its Java platform. With this change, GNU/Linux distros can include the non-free Sun Java platform, just as some now include the non-free nVidia driver. But they do so only at the cost of being non-free.
The Sun license has one restriction that may ironically reduce the tendency for users to accept non-free software without thinking twice: it insists that the operating system distributor get the user's explicit agreement to the license before letting the user install the code. This means the system cannot silently install Sun's Java platform without warning users they have non-free software, as some GNU/Linux systems silently install the nVidia driver.
If you look closely at Sun's announcement, you will see that it accurately represents these facts. It does not say that Sun's Java platform is free software, or even open source. It only predicts that the platform will be "widely available" on "leading open source platforms". Available, that is, as proprietary software, on terms that deny your freedom.
Why did this non-incident generate a large and confused reaction? Perhaps because people do not read these announcements carefully. Ever since the term "open source" was coined, we have seen companies find ways to use it and their product name in the same sentence. (They don't seem to do this with "free software", though they could if they wanted to.) The careless reader may note the two terms in proximity and falsely assume that one talks about the other.
Some believe that this non-incident represents Sun's exploratory steps towards eventually releasing its Java platform as free software. Let's hope Sun does that some day. We would welcome that, but we should save our appreciation for the day that actually occurs. In the mean time, the Java Trap still lies in wait for the work of programmers who don't take precautions to avoid it.
We in the GNU Project continue developing the GNU Compiler for Java and GNU Classpath; we made great progress in the past year, so our free platform for Java is included in many major GNU/Linux distros. If you want to run Java and have freedom, please join in and help.
Copyright 2006 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
Ah.. so this isn't the Copyleftist Ping.. ok.
Stallman is the whacko leftist who invented the term "copyleft", so you came to the right place. Now the question becomes, do you support copyleftists like Stallman (see the link above to his personal website), or do you not?
Yes.
Well at least you're willing to admit it! Poor renuzit seems to be suffering a MPD.
I don't know much about it, all I know is I don't like the way Windows XP keeps freezing.. so I'm shopping around.
Give the guy a break, will you?
He's trying to learn about other computer solutions available to him.
And secondly, if you're going to insult me, at least have the stones to post it straight to me...
Golly, you're ignorant.
"Liberal", as used in "liberal arts" has nothing to do with politics.
Don't know why I keep correcting you. I'd get farther talking to a fence post.
I'd recommend this:
http://www.apple.com/macmini/
Don't let renuzit talk you into running some hacker O/S that needs constant tweaking just because it's supposedly "free". Linux is only "free" for those whose time is worth nothing, and it's backed by radical leftists like Stallman.
Yeah because the liberal arts are overflowing with conservatives right? /ignorance
FYI--I'm not trying to push him into using Linux. I've made myself open if he has any questions or want more information about it.
.
I'll look into it.
Again you miss the point.
Liberal Arts, when referring to education, has no political connotation. As I've said, it comes from Liberalis, which means "of free men"
That same word is the root for Liberty...
Most of the other PoliSci majors I know and work with are also conservative. We all know we're a rare and often dying breed in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn't deter us at all.
Mac OS X contains a great deal of open source, much of which was created by hackers at Berkeley. Furthermore, Steve Jobs is a liberal and close friend of Al Gore, who serves on Apple's board.
Of course, these are not reasons to not buy a Mac, any more than Stallman's political ravings are reasons to not use Linux.
Apple's O/S is far from completely open, in fact they aren't releasing the kernel code for Intel processors nor are they using Stallman's license that would force them to. As for Gore's involvement with Apple, regretable, but unlike "the father of free software" Stallman, Gore's not the father of anything technical, no matter what he may try to tell you. Botto. line there's a lot of leftist in tech, but none any further left than Stallman.
Great, find yourself a large Best Buy or CompUSA, they should have some on display you can try. If you buy and don't like it or want to upgrade later, you can sell on ebay, and the value won't have depreciated near as much as a standard pc. Good Luck.
IIRC, much of Apple's open-source components weren't under GPL for starters--they were under BSD license.
The PowerPC kernel code's available, and rumor has it that with the release of Leopard will come the source code for the Intel architecture. However, there's bound to be security measures installed, as OSX is a mix of OSS and non-OSS components.
If you want to make things easy on yourself, give Mepis a try (www.mepis.com). You can run it from a CD so you don't have to install it to see what it's all about.
It gets criticized sometimes because it's not completely free software, i.e., it comes with Java and Flash, as well as drivers for nVidia and ATI cards. That doesn't matter much to me. But, almost everything is configured with a wizard or done automatically, and it supports a LOT of hardware. And, you can still download it for free.
My laptop, for example, is completely supported by Mepis. Everything works, including sound, video, network, CD burning, modem (you have to install a driver for this, but you can do it with a couple of clicks), wireless (the trickiest part, but not terribly difficult), and all were pretty painless to configure. A lot of these things will just configure themselves out of the box, in a lot of cases.
Just remember, the Court Jester will be your friend until you try Linux. Then he'll turn on you and start insulting you like he does the rest of us. To him, your software choice is more important than your basic humanity.
We actually keep a "lie and hypocrisy" list on the guy to document, in his own words, all of the deception, hatefulness, and cluelessness. It gets mind numbing at times.
If you try Mepis and have any questions, let me know.
Mepis is a good choice--finally got my friend to burn a disc and ran it at school.
Another good live CD is Slax. It's highly customizable (downloadable modules and Windows software to create a custom CD), and every time I've seen it work, the bare iso runs most everything out of the box.
FD; Echo--any other recommendations?
Is Slax live only, or can you install it?
I've had good luck with Zenwalk...it's Slack based, optimized for low resource systems. Runs like a scalded cat.
Are you still without a burner?
That'd be a hard situation for a distro junkie like myself.
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