DailyTech - Sun Says Large Amount of Java Now Open Sourced

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Software Sun Says Large Amount of Java Now Open Sourced
Michael Hoffman (Blog) - May 8, 2007 4:23 PM

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18 comment(s) - last by ksuWildcat.. on May 9 at 12:52 PM

The JavaOne Conference is officially underway from the Moscone Center in San Francisco

Sun Microsystems today announced that it has completed motions to make a large portion of the company's Java technology available to open source developers under the GNU General Public License version two. The company is ready to allow members of the OpenJDK community to have control of the Java Standard Edition (Java SE JDK) platform.

During the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, however, Sun asked the open source community for assistance in fixing a problem relating to the code release. The company states that some of the company's code, mainly dealing with Java 2D graphics technology, remains “encumbered,” -- meaning the code is owned by one entity but is currently entangled in legal issues. The company is unable to release the Java code under GPLv2, since the company does not own the intellectual property to it.

Sun will have to provide plug-ins for the technology until it can work with the open source community to rewrite the code – which will then also be made available under GPL2.

“Less than one year after we announced our intent to release Java technology as open source software under GPL v2, we have achieved our goal,” said Rich Green, Sun executive vice president of software.

Sun promised to open source Java during the 2006 JavaOne, and then made the code available in November under GPL v. 2.0.

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Superb

By Dactyl on 5/8/2007 8:20:36 PM , Rating: 2

Java is a beautiful language.

Beautiful things are best when they are naked.

RE: Superb

By dlambl on 5/8/2007 8:34:06 PM , Rating: 2

therefore, Java is best when it is naked.

sorry, couldn't help myself. :)

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RE: Superb

By Scrogneugneu on 5/8/2007 10:07:35 PM , Rating: 2

Please do not mix "language" and "thing". Those are two different words.

Java is best when still hot.

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RE: Superb

By Oobu on 5/9/2007 4:28:00 AM , Rating: 2

Ahem, Java IS a programming language.

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RE: Superb

By LogicallyGenius on 5/9/2007 12:24:51 AM , Rating: 1

What is really shocking was that now Java programs work fast and without Java Virtual Machine.

Among Torrent softwares Azureus (Java program) is giving faster performance than uTorrent (C program).

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RE: Superb

By plinden on 5/9/2007 12:40:21 AM , Rating: 3

First let me say I'm a Java programmer, and I much prefer it to C/C++. It's makes it much easier to program, avoiding the pitfalls of C/C++, and with all the tools available you can get a fast, stable application up and running in a fraction of the time it would take using a native language.

Second, let me say that there's no way any Java program, no matter how well written, will be faster than a well written C/C++ program that does the same thing. If uTorrent is slow, it's for other reasons unrelated to the language it is written in.

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RE: Superb

By smitty3268 on 5/9/2007 3:21:03 AM , Rating: 2

There are plenty of C/C++ programs that are slower than Java ones, like OOo and Firefox. They have some serious overhead built directly into their designs, though. I actually found uTorrent to be very good - memory usage is amazingly low and cpu use was decent which is something I couldn't say about Azureus, although the latter has a lot more features in it.

Technically a well written java program could outperform a native app thanks to all the special optimizations you can do while dynamically compiling instead of doing everything statically, but you're probably right that any practical app would be slower.

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RE: Superb

By johnadams on 5/9/2007 7:27:33 AM , Rating: 2

Java programs are written in a higher-level form per se and is more portable. C/C++ has more flexibility in terms of specific optimizations that can be done.
If we compare a Java proggy and a C/C++ proggy ceteris peribus, I'd say C/C++ wins in terms of performance, hands down.

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RE: Superb

By TomZ on 5/9/2007 7:48:56 AM , Rating: 2

I agree that C++ will win in terms of performance.

But I disagree that Java is at a "higher level" than C++. It is at the same level as C++, and is actually a subset of C++.

And I should remind you that C++ is also very portable. Java has done a slightly better job insulating programs a bit from the platform (e.g., data types), and also tried to incorporate cross-platform GUI support in its runtime libraries. The latter, while a performance disaster in most cases, gives the perception of greater portability, but the reality is that multi-platform GUI libraries also exist for C++ that give the same capabilities.

Really the main difference between the two systems is that Java lets you "compile" once for all platforms, whereas C++ requires you to compile individually for each platform.

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RE: Superb

By zsouthboy on 5/9/2007 10:37:34 AM , Rating: 2

Java really isn't slower than compiled languages anymore.

Seriously.

It's come such a long way.

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RE: Superb

By TomZ on 5/9/2007 11:37:53 AM , Rating: 1

I think anyone with experience programming in C++, Java, and C# can tell you that C++ is faster. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

But that's not really the point, is it. The point is whether Java and C# are fast enough for what you're using it for, and whether the productivity gains (esp. with C#) and/or ease of portability (esp. with Java) outweigh the slight decrease in performance and increase in memory usage that you will see when using a runtime-hosted application.

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RE: Superb

By TomZ on 5/9/2007 7:42:24 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Java is a beautiful language.

Is Java's implementation of generics beautiful? No, "type erasure" is a disaster.

Is Java's implementation of events/delegates beautiful? No, its use of nested classes for this purpose is ugly.

Is Java's support for object properties beautiful? No, that's right - no support - you get to write 'get' and 'set' methods. Very unattractive.

Is Java's implementation of enums beautiful? No, it is an abomination that should never have seen the light of day.

... Is Java beautiful? I think not!

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RE: Superb

By ksuWildcat on 5/9/2007 8:22:57 AM , Rating: 2

By definition, a bean must have getter & setter methods to access properties, but an object can have public member variables which are accessible using object_variable.member_name syntax , behaving similarly as a struct in C.

There certainly are some things about the Java programming language that could have been implemented differently (to the betterment of the language), but I would argue that every programming language is that way. Java is still better for developing distributed applications with n tiers than any other language.

I happen to like using nested classes for a variety of purposes, event handlers, delegates, factory objects, etc. But you're right about generics and enumerations, the Java implementation is far from ideal.

I guess it depends on what one is trying to accomplish when picking a language and development tools. Sometimes C/C++ is the way to go, sometimes C#, Java...and so on.

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RE: Superb

By TomZ on 5/9/2007 8:37:14 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
By definition, a bean must have getter & setter methods to access properties, but an object can have public member variables which are accessible using object_variable.member_name syntax , behaving similarly as a struct in C.

A good implementation of properties still executes code for the get and set property operations, but gives the users of the class the same syntax as accessing a public data member.

While I agree that each programming language has its issues, the thing that I can see is that when you look at languages in a particular development path, you see them generally getting better. For example, C < C++ < Java < C# is specifically what I have in mind. With each new language development, the languages designers learned a lot from the previous language.

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RE: Superb

By ksuWildcat on 5/9/2007 9:08:34 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
A good implementation of properties still executes code for the get and set property operations, but gives the users of the class the same syntax as accessing a public data member.

Ah, I see what you're saying now. That would be a nice feature to have built into the language, although usually getter/setter methods aren't supposed to do anything other than what their name implies. No extra operations should be performed, unless you're wrapping primitives into objects or extracting a primitive from an object.

I agree with you on the progression of programming languages, as each subsequent language borrows or enhances concepts from previous languages. C# (less MS-specific junk) is a beautiful language, and one can clearly see the influence of Java in C#.

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RE: Superb

By TomZ on 5/9/2007 11:58:18 AM , Rating: 1

quote:
usually getter/setter methods aren't supposed to do anything other than what their name implies. No extra operations should be performed

That would defeat the purpose of properties/accessors. The whole point is to be able to put code there - otherwise you might as well use public data members.

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RE: Superb

By ksuWildcat on 5/9/2007 12:52:28 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
That would defeat the purpose of properties/accessors. The whole point is to be able to put code there - otherwise you might as well use public data members.

Except in Java, where getter/setter methods are called/used by other application components or even containers, where the getter/setter methods (conceptually) provide a mapping or connection point for different data values relevant to that object. For example, a user bean which encapsulates information about a user & their session. Or in JSP, custom tags where there are attributes and a tag body that a tag handler uses. Any processing logic is handled elsewhere, such as doTagStart() & doTagEnd() methods. This is a very basic example of classic MVC architecture where separation between data, logic, and presentation is vital.

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Hopefully there will be major performance improvements...

By Locutus465 on 5/9/2007 12:47:42 AM , Rating: 2

In my expereince a java program of any significant size tends to be sluggish. In fact I've found that I was able to sniff out most major Java apps that I've used with out being aware ahead of time that it was indeed a java app. The Zend PHP Development environment is one classic (and painful as of the last time I used it) example.

It'd be nice to see the OSS community rectify this as much as possible. But for now, as far as such technologies go I'm personally a bigger fan of Microsoft's .Net. It simply performs better (at least certiainly on windows, I have no mono experience).