[LUNI] CNN.com - Java revved up to fight Microsoft - Jun. 21, 2003

[Keith T. Garner]

On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 04:29:40, Ronald Petty said:
> Wasn't BlackDown opensource?

Nope.  Blackdown has always had to abide by a license of Sun's.  See
http://blackdown.org/java-linux/docs/support/faq-release/FAQ-java-linux-8.html#licensing
for more information.

> Why is Sun doing an open source version important?

I'm not sure if it is.  But it may be in the future to keep java alive
against rise of C#.  At this point, I don't think much can really
remove Java from a lot of its installations nor prevent people from
using it in the future.

> Besides the grammar for the language has been available forever so
> anyone who wanted to write their own compiler could have (and byte
> code spec), and some have (embedded market, not personal java mind
> you).

No one has really done so (not counting gcj) as the blackdown and sun
ports were good enough.  Kaffe made a valient effort to be a JVM, but
they were always tremendously behind.

> This sounds like more PR than anything new.

Knowing sun, it probably is.

Keith, java programmer and blackdown fan for 6 years

-- 
   Keith T. Garner                                        kgarner at kgarner.com
   The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
 certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.  --Bertrand Russell