Oracle offers Java distraction to Google fisticuffs Oracle has promised to follow Sun and continue working on open-source Java in an apparent attempt to create a distraction from the damaging spectacle of its legal showdown with Google. Director of Java platform management Henrik Ståhl has promised that Oracle will be like just Sun Microsystems, working with the OpenJDK code …
+ GNU Ada (part of GCC)
+ PHP
+ Python
+ FreePascal/Lazarus
+ GTK
+ wxWidgets
+ Qt
+ Perl
+ GNU Smalltalk
+ Ruby
+ LLVM
+ Go
As long as Mr Larry does pursue his quest to extract money out of Java users retroactively, this technology (and all other ORA stuff) must be boycotted.
All of the software packages you mention only provide a subset of the functionality of the JDK, and none of them work together to provide anything like a substantial subset of the functionality of the JDK.
Apart from that GNU Ada, FreePascal, Lazarus, GNU Smalltalk and Go are extremely niche products of variable completeness. Try finding a team of competent programmers in any of those languages. Hell, try finding a team of programmers of any quality for most of them. Meanwhile wxWidgets, GTK+ and Qt are largely just GUI libraries, with the first one being extremely inelegant to program for.
As for Python, it's a decent language, but lacks equivalents for many of the third party libraries and packages available for Java.
As for PHP - get real.
then Mono would be no bigger evil.
If your programmers are incapable of writing a solid ERP application in Ada, they are simply dimwits you should not have hired in the first place. Indeed it will take some time to create an ODBC connector and maybe even an O/R mapper in Ada. It will take time to get you people up to speed with Ada.
But it will save you lots of legal exposure to the whimsies of Mr Larry. (Besides consuming 1/10th of hardware compared to Java).
Regarding PHP, Facebook is completely done in PHP. They even wrote a PHP2C++ converter. Facebook is not trivial, from a technology point of view.
Freepascal/Lazarus are already very good. Just look at the Lazarus IDE itself for an example.
Python - Google is doing lots of things with it.
Qt is an incredibly fast an efficient cross-platform GUI lib. Qt apps can run on little computers on which Swing would not even display a helloworld.
Look at Code::Blocks if you want to see wxWidgets in action.
The only thing I'll give you a thumbs-up for is Qt. Damn good library, and the only thing that made my C++ apps bearable. It is also multi-platform, though Trolltech used to charge something like $1200 for me to be able to use it on Windows. Other than that, it's a really good library! :)
Smalltalk, Pascal and other similar languages aren't that much in use these days ... probably Ada, but that is because the DoD built that language for their needs. Ruby... is something I hope meets a silent death.
PHP is kinda good, but for enterprisey stuff I've found myself sticking more and more with Java. Last I checked, Larry isn't pimping off Netbeans and Glassfish users, so I can still implement my Java solution with those tools and not have to pay Oracle a dime.
One thing I agree though: Mono is a betrayal to FOSS and should not be invested in. Let the .NET platform stick to MS, even with Mono it is still MS-oriented.
Guess they are starting to realize that Java is bigger then they are and that by taking google to court, they have basically pissed off every single developer working on it that they don't pay. Sucks when you realize your actions just cost you a bunch of free labor. Now they are trying to save face and say "look, we're still goog guys" while holding a gun against the side of your head. We need an evil icon for the oracle boss.
I know this is my own stupidity, but I swear Java is the most confusing software on the planet (i'm not talking about the actual programming code either). You have just from this article JDK, OpenJDK, IcedTea, Project Harmony, Dalvik, Java ME, JDK 7, and Java SE 7. Along with that I know of Tomcat, Netbeans, Glassfish, Eclipse, and Websphere and even more Java related terms I'm not even thinking about. I understand some are JVM, others are programming IDEs but seriously..... and thats not even touching the complexity of the language.
Different implementations, versions and such. That is diversity that came from openness and freedom.
Actual language is not that much complicated. But then, there are frameworks: Spring, EJB, Seam, Weld (Seam spec), Spago... libraries... richFaces, IceFaces... and then there are other JVM langages like Scala, Clojure, JRuby...
It is very diverse, and that is reason I beleive that Oracle can't control Java no matter how hard they try. And I don't beleive Larry is stupid, so I think he won't even try. Google case is something that Sun also planed, and remember that Sun sued Microsoft for very same thing that Google did: breaking WORA promise of Java. So I don't see it as attack on Java. Dalvik is not Java anyways.
GPLv2 has patent grant, read the license. GPLv3 has more broad patent grant, but that is irrelevant in case of OpenJDK because Oracle is one who distribute it. If Oracle move OpenJDK to GPLv3, it would make no difference. They can't sue you now, and they can't if it is GPLv3. They can only sue non-GPL implementation like Dalvik.
What you meant probably is the case of Mono. But that is different issue. Mono is not distributed by patent holder (Microsoft). It is by Novell. So Microsoft is third party and they can troll under GPLv2, but couldn't under GPLv3. But that has nothing to do with Java. Java is distributed by patent holder and it is irrelevant which version of GPL it uses.
There is no reason to believe that Oracle is lying about this. Everybody with half of clue can see that Oracle can't contain Java and they can't have it all for themselves. That ship have sailed. Java is free now and there is no going back. Oracle can play nice of others, or they can completely lose control of Java. There is no other choice. Google made this to themselves by not using GPL'd Java, but they can still try to invalidate those patents and use OpenJDK in future.
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Oracle is free to develop Java under whatever license it wants. The Java Community Program -which Sun set up- is, however, expected to provide the Test Compliance Kit to any JCP member who requests it. Sun and now Oracle will not supply it to Apache to test the Harmony class libraries -if they passed the TCK they'd automatically get the patent rights.
Oracle have made an enemy of Apache, who, along with people like the Eclipse, Jboss and Spring teams, provide some of the key tools that Java applications are built with and on. It was a daft thing to do to, and saying "we are still committed to making our code GPL" misses the point. If they'd said "we intend to comply with our requirements within the JCP" then there'd be something to celebrate.
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