Why bother open sourcing Java?
The debate on opening up the Java source code has been on for long; Sun’s chief open source officer Simon Phipps shares his view on the subject.
The debate on whether Java should be open sourced or not has been on for a long time now. While Java enthusiasts were not too happy with the constant demands of ‘open-source fanatics’ to open the source code of Java; IBM has been pushing very strongly for it and even offered to ‘work with Sun’ on an independent project to open source Java.
Till about last year Sun constantly reiterated that though it is a strong promoter of open source and understands it ‘better than anybody else’, but because of different agenda on the priority list would not like to take up open sourcing of Java.
In a recent announcement Sun disclosed that the process to open source Java is underway and an open source version of Java would be available soon. According to Simon Phipps chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems, a dedicated team has been put in place to do this, however it is not a ’simple endeavor’ because of several legal and access issues attached with it.
While the open sourcing of Java is under process, Simon made a ’serious’ point on this subject in his blog saying, “the number of developers interested in the source code to Sun’s Java SE implementation would be quite small (I guessed in the low hundreds).”
According to Simon, the main concern of all the 4 million plus Java developers is to be able to get a “full Java implementation everywhere they see the Java logo, which works the same as all others and includes all the class files their application needs.” These developers just focus on getting their work done using Java and will not be interested in any “activity that’s maintaining the internals of the Java platform.”
The number of people who would be actually interested in working on Java source code will be as low as 400, and would mainly include developers from the GNU/Classpath group, or developers working on Apache Harmony project. “I’d guess that as many as 400 people could eventually form a core developer community around an open source code base sparked by Sun’s implementation,” said Simon. “So why do something that, if it works, goes unnoticed by the 4 million? It’s not just for the 400,”
Having said that, Simon’s argument in favor of opening up the Java code is “while the actual code-base will only be touched by the 400, the 4 million will benefit from the extended deployment range, the greater pool of expertise and the greater diversity of interests that will result.” Though opening up of the Java code is not an easy task at hand but Sun has taken it up because Sun firmly believes in the “benefits that the 4 million will reap.”
