Weiqi Gao's Observations - freesoftware tag

A Free JDK Finally Arrives

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:17:03 GMT

It turns out that my prediction of a Free Software JDK was 1249 days too premature.

It's been more than three years since that post, but a Free JDK is finally here:

Rich Sharple: This week the IcedTea Project reached an important milestone - The latest OpenJDK binary included in Fedora 9 (x86 and x86_64) passes the rigorous Java Test Compatibility Kit (TCK). This means that it provides all the required Java APIs and behaves like any other Java SE 6 implementation - in keeping with the portability goal of the Java platform.

Hopefully, a free JDK will find its way into other Linux distributions, like Debian.

Ten Years Of Big Open Source

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:16:25 GMT

Mitchell Baker:
January 22, 1998 -- the Beginning of Mozilla

Anyone remember this?

NETSCAPE ANNOUNCES PLANS TO MAKE NEXT-GENERATION COMMUNICATOR SOURCE CODE AVAILABLE FREE ON THE NET

BOLD MOVE TO HARNESS CREATIVE POWER OF THOUSANDS OF INTERNET DEVELOPERS; COMPANY MAKES NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR AND COMMUNICATOR 4.0 IMMEDIATELY FREE FOR ALL USERS, SEEDING MARKET FOR ENTERPRISE AND NETCENTER BUSINESSES

...

I remember.

And I remember what a shock this was at the time. Prior to this, the software world had been divided into the proprietary software world and the free software world. There was not a whole lot of intermingling between the two. The internet was not as ubiquitous as it is today. And the advertiser paid trade magazines were the main source of information for IT workers.

And Free Software, in the RMS sense, was not even talked about in the respectable magazines. The whole proprietary software world behaved as if Free Software did not exist. When an article on C++ compilers were published, it wouldn't mention GCC. When an article on editors were published, it wouldn't mention Emacs.

IT shops often were built completely on proprietary software systems that were expensive and restrictive. I remember having to put a dongle on the parallel port of my 66MHz Pentium server running NT 3.5 just to use a scanning software package that cost thousands of dollars to license.

Then the term Open Source was coined, and a PR campaign was launched with Eric Raymond and Tim O'Reilly as the leading figures. ESR's The Cathedral & The Bazaar was an eye-opener for a lot of people.

The Netscape announcement was one that made Free Software and Open Source mainstream. I believe prior to this, when a software company gets crashed by Microsoft or anybody else, they just roll over and die.

The ten years since the announcement has seen Free and Open Source Software being adopted in a lot more places, and a lot more bit vendor proprietary software being released as Open Source. And the world is better place.

Here's my prediction for the next ten years: By 2018, most business computers will be running an open source operating system.

GPLv3 Released, Apache Rejects Compatibility Claim

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 13:19:40 GMT

The Free Software Foundation released GNU General Public License, version 3 (GPLv3) yesterday.

FSF: Version 3 of the GNU GPL strengthens this guarantee, by ensuring that users can modify the free software on their personal and household devices, and granting patent licenses to every user. It also extends compatibility with other free software licenses and increases international uniformity.

One of the gaols of GPLv3 is to make it compatible with the Apache License 2.0.

Richard Stallman: GPLv3 is now compatible with the Apache 2.0 license

However, Sam Ruby—"Hey, I just might be “whomever”. :-)" of Apache Software Foundation—reacted negatively to the compatibility claim:

Sam Ruby: The GPL V3 license is compatible with the ASF V2 license in precisely the same way that blood type AB is compatible with blood type O.

Specifically,

Sam Ruby: Apache Software Foundation will not distribute code which has either a direct dependency on GPL licensed code, or will only meaningfully operate when GPL code is installed.

The license war continues.