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Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for Mac OS X

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81–90 of 103 posts

Re: Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for Mac OS X

#81
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no fanboy, believe me. But most of that is pretty accurate.

The iPad is magical?

People using them with their autistic or otherwise-disabled kids seem to think the iPad is as close to magical as you're likely to find in the real world.

Re: Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for Mac OS X

#83
post #46
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only JRE that have passed the TCK (Java Compatibility Kit) get the patent waiver, No. That's not true. As long as your code is derived from OpenJDK (and unavoidably licensed under GPL), you are protected from patent lawsuits from Oracle (for technology contributed to OpenJDK). What it doesn't protect you from is trademark issues if you claim whatever thing you have is Java. You can say "pretty much compatible with…

It's ambiguous. Oracle's not the only company with patents in Java technology, the TCK patent protection clause is stronger than that in the GPL, in that it give you protection against non-Oracle patents that are part of Java. It's arguable that Oracle implicitly licences these as part of the GPL patent clause, but it's not watertight. Third-party implementations such as Harmony (and presumably GNU Classpath) obvious…

> Java isn't open until anyone can freely implement it.

This is the nub of the matter.

Re: Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for Mac OS X

#84
post #3

“…the foundation for a new graphical client” Cocoa??

"we will be adding pieces and parts of our Java SE 6 implementation to the public project, and will cut over from using an X11-based AWT to a Cocoa NSEvent-based one with a new OpenGL-backed graphics layer."

http://lists.apple.com/archives/Java-dev/2010/Nov/msg00104.h...

Re: Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for Mac OS X

#85
post #8

This is off-topic, but I'm amazed by the descriptions at the end of TFA (I know, I know, it's a press release, but still...) Oracle is the world’s most complete, open and integrated business software and hardware systems company. (...) Let's grant integrated and complete, but definitely not "open". Though this is dwarfed by Apple's incredible self-praise: Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world,…

I like the backhand sleight towards Microsoft as well:

the project now has the backing of three of the biggest names in software

Hmm, who could they be?

Re: Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for Mac OS X

#87
post #28
post #2

I'm itching to take a look at Apple's "foundation for a new graphical client"

I wonder why they don't just release their existing AWT/Swing adaptations? Either they are afraid of people using the Mac OS style on Windows, or that by open sourcing the style, they loose their copyright to it, or the code is such as mess that they'd rather not release it into the open.

The old backend was written with quartz, and hopelessly integrated into the OSX internals. It's part of the reason why Apple had to ship their own java.

The new backend will only depend on OpenGL, which is much better for anyone who isn't looking to lock you into their format. Which, oddly enough, appears to be Apple's goal with it's handling of java.

Re: Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for Mac OS X

#88

This is really Oracle's news rather than Apple's.

It's actually a more important announcement for Apple though in light of their stopping development of their own JVM. This allows them to still be behind it without having to actually do the work.

If you're following the apple-java mailing list, you'll see this isn't the (supposedly) the plan. They're contributing eAWT and eIO to openJDK, plus assisting in writing a new OpenGL based Swing backend and Swing lightweight placeholders for AWT components.

To quote Mike Swingler (Apple java engineering): "Cheers all, we look forward to working with you in public!"

Sounds like the plan is to continue Apple's work as part of a respected open source project. Compared to developing in secret like they have been, what's not to like about that?

Re: Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for Mac OS X

#89
post #21

I'm glad that they're not throwing everything away. I wonder if this will provide any benefit to the Linux OpenJDK.

If based on Cocoa, with more closed-source hooks, then probably not.

It's to be based on OpenGL. So hopefully!

Re: Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for Mac OS X

#90

I'm glad that they're not throwing everything away. I wonder if this will provide any benefit to the Linux OpenJDK.

My personal hope is that they'll do enough work to make the OpenGL Swing backend actually work. When our web browsers are starting to have credible 3D acceleration on our platforms... it's pretty unacceptable that the Swing OpenGL pipeline is so broken.
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