From: Michal Suchanek <hramrach@...>
Date: 2008-04-03T23:09:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Sun's Overview of Ruby and JRuby

On 02/04/2008, Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@sun.com> wrote:
> thufir wrote:
>
> > It's all good because Ruby, and, hopefully, someday, Java, will be GPL'ed.
>  IronRuby is a tad different because the Microsoft VM is closed.  The Java
> VM is closed (I think) but Java is, or will be, open :)
> >
>
>  Sun's Java VM has been GPL for over a year. I believe the only pieces
> remaining non-GPL are bits of code Sun did not have the rights to
> open-source, and there's work being done right now to replace them.
>
>  http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/faq.jsp
>
>  The OpenJDK project is here, and you can download and build it yourself:
>
>  http://openjdk.java.net/
>
>  Microsoft's CLR, on the other hand, is entirely closed source. Mono is an
> open-source port, but it always lags pretty far behind in compatibility and
> performance.
>
Well, the situation with Java is much better than it used to be. The
code is now opensource (mostly), and this will hopefully make it
possible to run Java on more exotic platforms releiving the most
painful grief with the proprietary platform.

However, Sun has made sure their implementation is the only one even
if opensource.

The specs used to have a very onerous license, and this has not
changed much. They are now free for "evaluation" - basically
discussion and developing in Java, and additionally you can use them
to write a complete tested independent implementation.
It is not clear what the status is when your implementation is
incomplete or does not pass the test, and the tests are very
proprietary, require an agreement in writing, and are normally
licensed only for OpenJDK - the Sun implementation (or to commercial
partners I guess).

Thanks

Michal