Open Source Java will help Java Gaming

[mstevano]

Hi guys,

I have been watching this forum for a long time and it helped me alot. So thank in advance for everything. This is actually my first post.

I read an interesting article today at eclipsepowered.

http://www.eclipsepowered.org/archives/2005/05/10/finally-open-source-java/

Apache will actually implement and release an open source J2SE implementation under the Apache 2 license. I think this will help the Java Gaming Community and Java Game Developers alot, when they now have a chance  to distribute their own cutomized VMs.

I read some posts from princec that there a licensing problems with the Sun VM. So this will change i think. What do you guys think about that.

It will be a while though, until they release the first version. But it's a great prospect for the future.

I hope this is the right place to post that message. I was just so excited when i read the article, that i wanted to let you guys know about this.

Mike

[gimbal]

I wonder if the Apache group is doing the right thing here. Sun has a good reason not to make the JVM open source. Now Apache wants to develop their own JVM, but how are they going to keep up with Sun? When Apache releases their J2SE5 JVM, Sun will either be finishing or has already released their J2SE6 JVM...

I'm seeing a future that Sun is trying to prevent: Java becoming a hell to work with because of different JVM implementations floating around. As soon as Apache GPL's it's own JVM other people can create their own JVM branches from it... and they may have whole other idea's when it comes to following a standard. I'm not saying it will happen, but it's already bad that it can happen.

"No sir, I don't like it. I don't like it at all"
- the horse from Ren & Stimpy

[Erestar]

In the interest of keeping an open mind I'm not going to refute that this could potentially result in a mixed world, with developers having to support the quirks of different VMs, but I'd like to point out a few things.

- The ASF has Sun's blessing on this, which could be a political position or the might just realize (see second point)

- The folks at Apache have a good track record of doing good work, upholding and _promoting_ the use of standards, and seem to be pretty moral. At the very least I'd wait to see how it works out before doubting.

- Finally, I don't think that we need to worry about a wide-spread pile of general purpose distributions. There are a lot of popular applications out there written in Java. If someone was using a new VM that didn't run those applications I imagine they'd just switch to a VM that worked. I think you'll only see these custom VMs bundled to work with a certain piece of software like the OP suggested, at which point it hopefully wouldn't affect any other VMs a user had running.

Bottom line is I have faith in these folks.

Erestar