Simon’s Blog

Sometimes, I wonder. I really do. I don’t mean to be rude, but the latest missive from Richard Stallman on the state of Java is just nonsense. Really, there’s no other word for it.

Richard says,

Our community has been abuzz with the rumor that Sun has made its implementation Java free software (or “open source”).

Errrrrr… how can I put this? Wait… I know - no it hasn’t! There has been no serious rumour that Sun has Open Sourced Java… except the one that Richard Stallman just started by writing this piece.

He goes on to say,

Why did this non-incident generate a large and confused reaction?

Errrrrrr… well, there was no confused reaction…apart from yours, that is! Surely, no-one with more than a single brain cell could possibly have been genuinely confused by this. All the discussions on Sun’s recent move to enable Java to be distributed with Linux that I’ve seen have been quite clear about what Sun has done.

Furthermore, Stallman seems to imply that Sun may have tried to mislead or confuse people here,

If you look closely at Sun’s announcement, you will see that it accurately represents these facts.

Look closely? Oh please. You can trivially see that Sun accurately states the true position, even from a quick glance at the announcement. Here, have a quick glance.

So what is the point of Stallman’s article? Seemingly, its purpose is to try to get people to join the GNU Compile for Java and GNU Classpath projects. I can’t see how this FUD article helps that particular cause.

Now, I want the five minutes of my life back that I wasted reading Stallman’s article.