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I wonder did the drive behind people creating open source JDKs have nothing to do with Sun open sourcing theirs? I wonder in an alternative world where Sun lock

I wonder did the drive behind people creating open source JDKs have nothing to do with Sun open sourcing theirs? I wonder in an alternative world where Sun locked down Java as hard as possible and sued anyone and everyone, would they not have been bought by Oracle? Are we sure that an editor will be able to displace VS Code in the future, if it's given away for free and so feature-packed? Browsers are another example of this. Or would the VS Code successor look like an Apple/Google/Amazon fork of VS Code?

brundolf 4y ago
But ultimately these applications are still winning based on merit. If somebody created a new editor or browser that was substantially better, nothing's really stopping everyone from moving to it. Now- we can talk about how it's a problem that nobody can afford to build something good enough to compete with what these megacorps can afford to develop and give away for free. But that's a different, older, much bigger discussion.
- slimsag 4y ago
  You and GP's point is that these applications win on the merits of their user experience. That's not wrong, in fact I'd say that's absolutely true. But it's important to call out that the user experience most people care about has almost nothing to do with whether or not software is open/hackable. Because of that, I would suggest it is realistic that a decade or two from now we could largely lose that feature, and find we have 100% proprietary cloud-based IDEs.
  - brundolf 4y ago
    Yes, we could end up in a world some day where most people are using 100% proprietary cloud-based IDEs. But then, at worst, we're back where we started. All the open-source foundations we have now will still be there (plus any open bits from the cloud editors, like Monaco and LSP). Anyone sufficiently motivated to avoid using these cloud-based IDEs will have just as many options as they do today, and probably more. I just don't see how this is a loss.
  - Ferret7446 4y ago
    >But it's important to call out that the user experience most people care about has almost nothing to do with whether or not software is open/hackable. For software developers I think that's a damn shame. Craftsmen have always made their tools suit themselves. If you aren't hacking your development tools, you're missing out, and if that opportunity is lost due to closed IDEs, that really sucks.
pjmlp 4y ago
They did not sue as such, but never provided Apache Harmony with their TCK compliance test suite. Oracle haters worshiping Sun, keep forgeting Java was only free beer until Java 6. Sun went bankrupt shortly after Java 6 (which still had a couple of comercial stuff like Swing fonts rendering engine), and only Java 7 released after Oracle's acquisition was fully open source. Given that no one else bothered to acquire Sun, Java would have died with Java 6, partially open source. Maybe Apache Harmony would kept going at it, but I don't expect the amount of language changes, JIT or GC improvements to happen as they did.

brundolf 4y ago

But ultimately these applications are still winning based on merit. If somebody created a new editor or browser that was substantially better, nothing's really stopping everyone from moving to it. Now- we can talk about how it's a problem that nobody can afford to build something good enough to compete with what these megacorps can afford to develop and give away for free. But that's a different, older, much bigger discussion.

slimsag 4y ago
You and GP's point is that these applications win on the merits of their user experience. That's not wrong, in fact I'd say that's absolutely true. But it's important to call out that the user experience most people care about has almost nothing to do with whether or not software is open/hackable. Because of that, I would suggest it is realistic that a decade or two from now we could largely lose that feature, and find we have 100% proprietary cloud-based IDEs.
- brundolf 4y ago
  Yes, we could end up in a world some day where most people are using 100% proprietary cloud-based IDEs. But then, at worst, we're back where we started. All the open-source foundations we have now will still be there (plus any open bits from the cloud editors, like Monaco and LSP). Anyone sufficiently motivated to avoid using these cloud-based IDEs will have just as many options as they do today, and probably more. I just don't see how this is a loss.
- Ferret7446 4y ago
  >But it's important to call out that the user experience most people care about has almost nothing to do with whether or not software is open/hackable. For software developers I think that's a damn shame. Craftsmen have always made their tools suit themselves. If you aren't hacking your development tools, you're missing out, and if that opportunity is lost due to closed IDEs, that really sucks.

pjmlp 4y ago

They did not sue as such, but never provided Apache Harmony with their TCK compliance test suite. Oracle haters worshiping Sun, keep forgeting Java was only free beer until Java 6. Sun went bankrupt shortly after Java 6 (which still had a couple of comercial stuff like Swing fonts rendering engine), and only Java 7 released after Oracle's acquisition was fully open source. Given that no one else bothered to acquire Sun, Java would have died with Java 6, partially open source. Maybe Apache Harmony would kept going at it, but I don't expect the amount of language changes, JIT or GC improvements to happen as they did.