I wanted to let you know that Daniel Lyons' February 21 article, Bitter Brew, tarred open source software (software such as Linux, the Apache web server, and the Perl programming language) with a brush dipped in Java. Java is not an open-source software project. It has been released under a license called the Sun Community Source License, or SCSL, which has been rejected by the open source community precisely because of the "control by Sun" features that the article complained about.

If Java were under a true open source license, the problems outlined in the article would not occur. One of the fundamental differences between the SCSL and open source-approved licenses is what programmers call "the right to fork"-- the right to create independent versions. Forks are not done gratuitously. As Eric Raymond argued in Homesteading the Noosphere (also published as part of the book The Cathedral and the Bazaar), there is a system of implicit "property rights" (much like "moral rights" as understood in Europe) even when software is released under a completely free license. Forks are generally made only when a project has been abandoned by its creator or when there are serious technical differences.

That being said, I believe that Sun has not gone all the way to open-source because they fear (with some justification) that Microsoft would use a more open license to create forks designed only to cripple the adoption of Java as a cross-platform language. I believe (as do most of the people involved with open-source software projects) that Sun would be safer relying on public opinion and the goodwill of developers than on their restrictive license, and I believe that they will ultimately come to that conclusion themselves.

Meanwhile, I think that the disaffection that you report is something of a tempest in a teapot, a set of conflicts that don't seriously detract from Java's momentum. It's precisely because of Java's enormous success that companies are squabbling over how to get a bigger piece of the pie.

--Tim

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