Re: OT: Politics of Java
Kent West wrote:
> I picked up Dori Smith's "Java for the World Wide Web" book at the
> library the other day; thought I'd at least introduce myself to the
> basics of Java programming. I am not a programmer; just did the usual
> college class work in the basic languages (Pascal, Fortran, BASIC), and
> then a smallish app or two in C. (And of course, WordPerfect's macro
> language back "in the day" :-)
>
> However, as I started to download the SDK from Sun's web site, it
> started bothering me more and more that Sun's license is such that it
> prevents Debian from including it as part of the distro. I'm not sure of
> all the issues; I just know that in order to be part of Debian, it must
> be "Free Software", and apparently Sun's SDK doesn't fit. As a result, I
> decided not to download the SDK, and thus to give up on learning Java. I
> know that I'm probably in the minority, placing philosophy above
> practicality, but it's just the principle of the thing. I'm not
> completely averse to using non-Free software, but I decided I didn't
> want to contribute to the use/development of non-free programming languages.
>
> I'm just curious; do other folks (particularly real developers, not just
> tinkerer-wanna-be's like myself) have a similar problem with Java, or
> have I just been channeling too much RMS lately?
No, you haven't been smoking too much RMS. Java is not an open standard;
it is controlled entirely by Sun, for Sun's benefit.
I'll leave other comments I might make about Java as a language for
another day, since I don't think it's relevant to your question.
Craig
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