ONLamp: Sun Should Open Source Unprofitable Parts of Java

[ Thanks to Jason Greenwood for this link. ]

"Java already has chunks from IBM-sponsored Open Source projects: the XML libraries from Apache and the Taligent-derived internationalization technologies developed by Mark Davis' ICU4J team. IBM is talking to Sun about some kind of further Open Sourcing arrangement for Java. Java is openish: it has a community process to guide the development of new libraries, its source code is readily available, it puts out betas for advance feedback, and it has had a bug tracking forum with voting to allow the least popular bugs to be tracked (and, I suppose, to get addressed earlier: nice if everyone really has the same bugs.)

"Looks good, but there is also a dynamic at play which keeps some parts of Java in the doldrums, and I don't see that shifting Java over to some IBM/Sun-sponsored consortium would necessarily make much difference. Open Sourcing can only deliver the benefits of 10,000 eyes when feedback and enhancements can be merged back into the code base fast. Any organization dealing with code fixing must prioritize their fixes according to their own lights and capacity. As Joel on Spolksy creepily puts it Fixing bugs is only important when the value of having the bug fixed exceeds the cost of the fixing it..."

Complete Story

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• eWeek Pundits Debate Open-Source Java(Mar 09, 2004)
• BBC: From Code War to Cold War(Mar 06, 2004)
• Computer Business Review: Sun "Open" to Letting Java Go, with Strings(Mar 04, 2004)
• Community: Beyond an Open Source Java(Feb 24, 2004)