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Open Source Weblog
Former Sun exec calls for open source Java
March 30, 2006
The prospect of Sun open sourcing Java has arisen again thanks to an open letter from ActiveGrid founder and CEO, Peter Yared, to Sun's president and chief operating officer Jonathon Schwartz.
Yared is a former Sun employee, having served as CTO of the company's application server decision following its acquisition of NetDynamics - as well as a researcher with Sun Labs, and CTO of the company's Network Identity project - and he poses a pretty direct question for Sun.
"Why is it good to open source OpenSolaris and OpenOffice and bad to open source Java?" he asks.
"We all know the standard Sun answer that Java will get fractured and that the JCP is great. However, OpenSolaris and OpenOffice have not been fractured since being open sourced. And most of the Java innovation nowadays comes from open source projects like Spring and Hibernate, not the JCP, which then has to recreate all of these open source projects."
Yared is certainly not the first to suggest Sun should open up the process around Java, with IBM and BEA arguing in 2004 that open sourcing J2SE could speed innovation and adoption and provide consistency across implementations.
Sun has opposed the proposal, maintaining that the argument behind open sourcing Java has not been properly explained and that in order to uphold standards the code for its reference implementation needs to be closed.
Yared maintains that opening up the code would be good for everyone - including Sun - however. "Can you guys let go a bit and let us all share a single, open source virtual machine? It would be good for Java, good for LAMP, and good for customers. Combining two of the three leading development platforms would make them both more competitive against .Net."
Sun is yet to respond to Yared, but given the company's love for open letters, it can only be a matter of time.
On another note, Web 2.0 is *so* 2005.
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