Testing Mono's compatibility

[Joseph Sinclair]

der.hans wrote:
> Am 13. Sep, 2006 schw�tzte Josh Coffman so:
> 
<<snip>>
>>
>> What is the history of the Java VM? I personally don't
>> know. Did Sun implement it for every platform? Or were
>> some platform VM's implemented outside of Sun?
> 
<<snip>>
> Pertinent to Josh Z's point, I think, is that Java is now under the
> control of a standards body and Sun no longer controls it. That means Sun
> can't yank the rug out from under a Free Software group that implements
> compilers and VMs for the Java language. I'm not sure Beans, etc. are
> open standards.
> 
<<snip>>
> 
> I might not correctly understand the situation. Until recently I did not
> know that Java was under the control of a standards group that isn't
> controlled by Sun.
> 
> ciao,
> 
> der.hans
> 
Just to clarify, all of the Java platform standards(J2SE, J2EE, J2ME, and all their components) are based on JSR's (Java Specification Request).  All of which are vetted by the Java Community Process (JCP) which is an independent(although Sun provides program management and some legal support) organization that controls and manages the Java platform specifications (www.jcp.org).  JCP Executive Committee members include, among others, HP, Google, Oracle, Apache, Intel, Sony, Samsung, and IBM, some of whom have pledged to ensure that the JSR's remain available for all compatible implementations.  With that much corporate muscle behind the JCP, it's highly unlikely that Sun could ever successfully pack up Java and carry it away, even if they wanted to.
All "standard" elements of the Java platform are controlled by the JCP.  The only thing Sun still owns in total is the Java trademark (which they have pledged to use only to maintain the "write once run anywhere(r)" promise, much as Linus pledges to use the Linux trademark only to promote GNU/Linux).

With Sun promising to open-source their JVM, GNU classpath rapidly approaching a complete implementation at least through version 1.4 under LGPL with a special exemption, and Harmony and other independent Free/Open JVM implementations now on par with the Sun implementation, worries about Java being "non-free" should be largely assuaged.

BTW, Sun never could "yank the rug out from under" a free software group implementing a JVM, the original Java specification was released with a license that was very similar to the Adobe PDF license (i.e. you can create anything you want, but if you want to call it Java, it has to implement the spec correctly).  The big sticking point, until 2002, was that the compatibility test(TCK) required to call something "Java" was(still is) incredibly expensive.  In 2002 the JCP changed their member agreements and policies to ensure that only commercial implementors had to pay full price for the TCK, and adding language to ensure that ALL JSR's were licensed in a manner that would be amenable to Free/Open software implementations.
I won't say that it's completely impossible for Sun to make a mess of the Java Platform at this point (they could probably force a rename and fork if they wanted to), but they've proven themselves a good member of the Free/Open community over the past 8 years (OpenSolaris, OpenOffice, Tomcat, OpenDocument, now Open Source Java), and have earned, IMO, a bit of trust.

==Joseph++