Information freedom for open source users.

Despite personal beliefs, everybody treads a bit more carefully on Friday the 13th. But no amount of precaution could protect the Open Source community from the wave of bad luck that fell last Friday. Oracle finally lived up to the fears many have been afraid to speak. more>>

GMGruman writes “In an InfoWorld blog, Paul Krill suggests that those concerned that Java might get lost in Oracle’s tangle of acquired technologies should relax a little: Java’s future isn’t wholly in Oracle’s hands, so if Oracle screws up or lets Java languish, the popular language has other forces to move it forward nonetheless.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adobe will ship today its renamed digital rights management software for the Flash platform. Previously known Flash Media Rights Management Server, the new incarnation is called Flash Access 2.0. The company already had announced intentions to shorten the name and will roll out the upgrade at New York’s Streaming Media East conference.

bgweber writes “Last year, the IEEE conference on Computational Intelligence and Games hosted a competition to determine who could write the best AI for playing Mario levels (YouTube video). This year, the conference has expanded the competition to include a track on level generation as well, where the goal is to generate new levels online procedurally. Submitting an entry is as easy as implementing a Java interface that performs procedural content generation. The implications of this competition are techniques for greatly increasing the replayability of games, since each gameplay session could present new levels to the player.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the most appealing aspects of journalism is that, sometimes, you get to give billionaires like Larry Ellison (right) some free advice.

Our story begins late last month, after I suggested here that Oracle was “taking OpenSolaris back.”

I got a lot of blogospheric pushback, calling me out by name. Masoud Kalali at JavaNet said I got it wrong. This spread halfway around the world, then  to NatMac, to Jessica Thornsby, and finally Alex Gorbachev demanded I stop the FUD. I wish I’d seen it.

Their main point was that the OpenSolaris license didn’t change, only the basic Solaris conditions. Point taken. But what is most interesting to me (although I could always be wrong again) is the reaction from Oracle itself.

Silence. And this silence has many customers wondering whether Oracle is interested in open source at all.

The silence is telling. It’s the dog that did not bark. Oracle is going about its business, bloggers notwithstanding, ignoring even ServerWatch’s recent claims that OpenSolaris is going bye-bye.

It reminds me a bit of politics, not in a partisan sense but in a tactical sense. That is, the first response to a charge is to ignore it. You only address it when the charge gains traction.

That is conventional wisdom, but as Democrats claim they learned in the health reform debate, that conventional wisdom is wrong.

In my own case, I’m sure a phone call from some Oracle PR maven would have gotten quick results. But that didn’t happen. There was no official request for a correction, not even an official response in the Talkbacks.

I am not saying here that it’s Oracle’s fault I got something wrong. Point is that silence is a vacuum that gets filled by others, not to your advantage. The concerns about the future of OpenSolaris are spreading rapidly to other Oracle assets, to Java and to OpenOffice.

No doubt Oracle believes that actions speak louder than words. But something I have said repeatedly here, and will continue to say, knowing that at least here I’m right, is that open source is not just business. Treating it as just business is a mistake. Open source always has an element of politics in it, because you’re dealing with communities, not just customers.

Oracle ignores this at its financial peril.

Oracle today patched a critical Java vulnerability that is being exploited by hackers to install malicious software.

The security update to Java SE 6 Update 20 patches a bug disclosed last Friday by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy, who spelled out how attackers could run unauthorized Java programs on a victim’s machine by using a feature designed to let developers distribute their software. Only systems running Windows are at risk.

Just five days after a Google researcher published information of an unpatched Java bug, a compromised song lyrics site is sending users to a Russian attack server exploiting the flaw to install malware, an antivirus firm said today.

It’s not just that James Gosling has left Oracle.

It’s not just that he’s considered the “father of Java.”

It’s the way that he did it that will leave a mark.

Gosling actually left on April 2, then opened a new blog (at Nighthacks.com) a week later to confirm the rumors he’d gone and to leave some rather cryptic hints that things are not all rosy over in Oracle-land:

As to why I left, it’s difficult to answer: Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good.

Open Office was a money sink, and mySQL expected to lose its best-and-brightest. But Java was Sun’s great open source success story, its crown jewel. Gosling’s leave-taking is going to leave a mark.

The fact that his cartoon-like image on the new blog sports that image of Duke, the open source Java mascot (above), rather than a branded Java image should also speak volumes. Apparently Gosling is no longer willing to be Oracle’s Butler. (Sorry, couldn’t stop myself on that one.)

Seriously. The willingness of developers to expand the footprint of an open source project is based, in part, on their confidence that the sponsor has their back, that it’s as committed to the project as they are, and that its open source bonafides are in order.

Gosling’s leaving adds to the impression that Oracle’s open source bonafides are not in order.

A Google researcher has published details of a Java virtual machine bug that could be used to run unauthorized programs on a computer.

The attack was disclosed Friday by Google’s Tavis Ormandy, who said he had notified Oracle’s Sun team about the flaw earlier. “They informed me that they do not consider this vulnerability to be of high enough priority to break their quarterly patch cycle,” Ormandy wrote. “I did not agree.”

Thrashing Rage writes “James Gosling has confirmed he is leaving Sun/Oracle: ‘Yes, indeed, the rumors are true: I resigned from Oracle a week ago (April 2nd). I apologize to everyone in St. Petersburg who came to TechDays on Thursday expecting to hear from me. I really hated not being there. As to why I left, it’s difficult to answer: just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good. The hardest part is no longer being with all the great people I’ve had the privilege to work with over the years. I don’t know what I’m going to do next, other than take some time off before I start job hunting.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trailrunner7 writes “There is a serious vulnerability in Java that makes all current browsers vulnerable to simple Web-based attacks that could lead to a complete compromise of the affected system. Two separate researchers released information on the vulnerability on Friday, saying that it has been present in Java for years. The problem lies in the Java Web Start framework, a technology that Sun Microsystems developed to enable the simplified deployment of Java applications. In essence, the JavaWS technology fails to validate parameters passed to it from the command line, and attackers can control those parameters using specific HTML tags on a Web page, researcher Ruben Santamarta said in an advisory posted Friday morning.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

derrida writes “After more than 4 years C is back at position number 1 in the TIOBE index. The scores for C have been pretty constant through the years, varying between the 15% and 20% market share for almost 10 years. So the main reason for C’s number 1 position is not C’s uprise, but the decline of its competitor Java. Java has a long-term downward trend. It is losing ground to other languages running on the JVM. An example of such a language is JavaFX script that is now approaching the top 20.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

snydeq writes “Fatal Exception’s Neil McAllister questions Oracle’s ability to revive interest in Java in the wake of Oracle VP Jeet Kaul’s announcement at EclipseCon that he would ‘like to see people with piercings doing Java programming.’ ‘If Kaul is hoping Java will once again attract youthful, cutting-edge developers, as it did when it debuted in 1995, [Kaul] may be in for a long wait,’ McAllister writes. ‘Java has evolved from a groundbreaking, revolutionary language platform to something closer to a modern-day version of Cobol.’ And, as McAllister sees it, ‘Nothing screams “get off my lawn” like a language controlled by Oracle, the world’s largest enterprise software vendor. The chances that Java can attract the mohawks-and-tattoos set today seem slimmer than ever.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jacobsen vs. Katzer is over. Jacobsen won.

Why should you care? Because the result of the case is that open source licenses are valid. Violate them at your peril.

The facts were not in much dispute. This was always a question of law.

Jacobsen developed the Java Model Railroad Project (JMRI), an open source system for running model trains.

Katzer took the code, stripped out the authorship, and added it to his proprietary product. This violated the Artistic License then being used for the code. (It’s now under GPL V. 2 with the Classpath exception.)

Katzer tried to argue that the software was not original, then that this was a contract issue, not a copyright question. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the nation’s main court for intellectual property, disagreed.

Now there’s a settlement, with Katzer not only paying $100,000 (over 18 months) but providing a means to handle future disputes outside court. You can read the whole settlement here.

In its statement on the settlement JMRI thanked hundreds of model railroaders who contributed to its legal effort and the legal team headed by Victoria Hall of Bethesda, Md. and David McGowan of UCSD.

You might to thank them, too.

Niris writes “I’m currently taking a course called Advanced Java Programming, which is using the text book Absolute Java, 4th edition, by Walter Savitch. As I work at night as a security guard in the middle of nowhere, I’ve had enough time to read through the entire course part of the book, finish all eleven chapter quizzes, and do all of the assignments within a month, so all that’s left is a group assignment that won’t be ready until late April. I’m trying to figure out what else to read that’s Java related aside from the usual ‘This is how to create a tree. This is recursion. This is how to implement an interface and make an anonymous object,’ and wanted to see what Slashdotters have to suggest. So far I’m looking at reading Beginning Algorithms, by Simon Harris and James Ross.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sproketboy writes “Project Darkstar, an open source software platform from Sun labs that simplifies the development of horizontally scalable servers for online games, is being discontinued as of the Oracle acquisition. This project, mentioned a couple of years back on Slashdot, was a unique concept for building an application server specific to on-line gaming. Sadly they were so close at version 0.9.11 (which is still very stable). Hopefully the open source community can get involved and help continue work on this project.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It’s over. It’s done.

The ring has been delivered back safe to Mordor, and Sauron’s Eye gazes benevolently over the Shire. The wicked Gandalf will trouble us no more, nor shall tricksie Hobbitses bedevil our poor servant Gollum.

In other words now that Oracle owns Java, Open Office, and mySQL, what will happen to open source?

The long-awaited, and feared, completion of the Oracle-Sun deal sets up a fight-of-flight fight-or-flightresponse in the heart of every open source maven.

It also holds hard lessons.

Open source can’t hide from the market, nor from those expert at binding-and-loosing the forces of that market.

Oracle now holds the copyrights on code that is basic to any open source business. Its reputation precedes it — it’s completely into profit maximization, into monopoly rents, into treating captive customers as, well, captive.

Yes, open source has options. The mySQL software has already been forked. Java support comes from a host of other companies — SpringSource, JBOSS, etc. etc. IBM has given Openoffice.org rights to distribute its Symphony suite, and it’s pretty nifty.

But this acquisition marks a turning point. It puts an end to the idea that individuals or small companies can, by organizing a community, overcome the industry’s giants. The giant just bought you out.

Think of this as evolution in action. Mammals existed in the time of the dinosaurs but, as the late Stephen J. Gould said, they lived in the nooks and crannies of the dinosaurs’ world. Dinosaurs are still with us, of course, and they taste just like chicken.

In other words, there are dominant players and there are subsidiary players. Any industrial ecosystem is complex, but once it develops it’s established. It acquires what ecologists call a “climax state.” It takes an unimaginable disaster to disrupt such a system.

This is the climax state of software. Oracle, Microsoft, some smaller beasties, some creatures neither fish-nor-fowl, and down near the bottom of the food chain, open source.

Is there anything wrong with that?

Oracle can have Sun, and mySQL, the European Commission has ruled.

Opponents of the deal like Florian Mueller are holding out hope that China or Russia can derail it, as he wrote me this morning Atlanta time:

Oracle still needs clearance from the Chinese and Russian antitrust authorities and it’s a matter of respect not to consider this process finished until those major jurisdictions have also taken and announced their decisions.

Maybe, but these companies only have sales representation in Russia and China, possibly some technical people. Financially the units involved are American and European.

I don’t think Russia or China is getting involved. Unless China wants to make a point in its ongoing fight with Google, which is an iron clad leave to yourself from a three-rail billiard shot. (If they do, in other words, ya got trouble right here in River City.)

The EC decided that PostgreSQL is a creditable alternative to mySQL and could replace it in the market if Oracle decides to ditch the product. (Ingres certainly hopes so.) The commission also holds out hope for a fork of mySQL, again should Oracle not invest in it.

The case file also looked at Java, concluding that its community can be an effective check against anything Oracle might want to do with the technology that people don’t like.

After all the rhetoric that has gone out from this side of the pond toward Europe, the final report seems to be all that Larry Ellison could ask for. Would he have gotten his way without all the screaming?

We’ll never know.

Dithering has become one of the big insult words of 2009.

The President was said to be dithering on Afghanistan. The Senate was said to be dithering on health care.

It’s both a technical term and a non-technical one. Dither makes your CD clearer by preventing banding on a recording. Dithering in this case is good, it clarifies.

That’s not what the critics mean. They mean shaking with cold and doing nothing about it, in short vacillating. The insult means you should take action, some action, before you catch your political death.

Over the last few weeks open source users have gotten into a dither over Larry Ellison’s dithering. He demands the EC approve his purchase of Sun, no preconditions, and when that’s not happening he just stands out there in the cold.

It’s not making the music of this merger any clearer, or its picture any sharper. That is certain. The intent to use mySQL is falling, Sun is losing server share, and companies like Red Hat and VMWare’s SpringSource unit are taking up the slack on Java for their own reasons. IBM is not going to let Open Office just die.

My silly idea, of creating a Foundation among mySQL stakeholders, makes more and more sense. Separate the code from the money, and you take the money, Larry.

Business, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and the impasse between Oracle and the EC, while highly entertaining and strangely satisfying in a nationalistic sort of way, is bad for business. And business is business. It’s not romance, it’s not war, it’s not about feelings. It’s just business.

Pride goes before a fall, Mr. E. A mySQL Foundation raises money, improves maintenance of the code base, and lets you make more money in the long run than winning a pissing match with the Eurocrats.

Stop dithering and do business.

Open source is, in part, a release of ego.

When a program is proprietary, it’s yours. You own it. You can feed it or you can kill it.

Not so with open source. When software is made open source it is with the knowledge that its fate is shared among all stakeholders. The contributions that make it valuable may well come from outside, the direction of the software is no longer completely in the hands of its owner or sponsor.

Larry Ellison doesn’t understand this, and I suspect neither does Wall Street. Otherwise, why would the Street be cheering on Ellison’s suggestion that he’ll kill Sun to keep Euro-hands off mySQL?

More than the future of mySQL is now on the line. So are the futures of Java and OpenOffice, and all the other projects Sun Microsystems sponsors. Ellison thinks this fact should make the EC Competition Commissioner, Nellie Kroess, back off. He seems to think the U.S. government can make Kroess relent.

The key to why Ellison is wrong can be found in the paragraph above. It’s one word. I’ll wait…

The word is sponsors.

Open source companies don’t own the code bases that are in their charge. They seek to monetize the code, so the code can be expanded, so it will draw more committers. Acquia doesn’t own Drupal, and Automattic doesn’t own WordPress. The code bases are, in fact, owned by the community, simply by virtue of being open source.

Ellison seems to think that if he snaps his fingers and brings down the wrath of heaven, then mySQL and Java and OpenOffice will cease to exist. This would be true if they were closed source. In that case they would be orphaned, and if no buyer were found support would disappear.

Open source does not work that way.

Sure it would be tough for these big projects to find new sponsors. But there are plenty of prospects around.

Google would have an interest in Java, as might Microsoft. IBM already has a stake in Open Office. I’m certain we can find another home for mySQL, too. Even Glassfish might well find a new home within the federal government.

Ellison’s threat to kill Sun’s open source projects if he does not get his way is an empty one. Someone would pick up what remaining pieces have value.

Open source, divorced from its sponsor, turns to software water, and would quickly flow through Ellison’s hands.

Go to an open source conference. Listen carefully to the commercial open source businesspeople you see there. They may talk about their kids and their companies, their hobbies and their passions, including a passion for the projects they control.

But they know those projects are more like their kids than their sailboats. They are responsible for the software they control. They do not own it. It’s not “my” software. It’s “our” software.

This is the attitude you must take if you’re to make a success of an open source business. This is why many in the proprietary world, like Larry Ellison, confuse it with communism, or socialism, or some other foreign -ism.

Open source be not proud. Open source code responds to whomever gives it the love of time. The parents aren’t those who gave it the DNA of capital, but those who gave it the love of hard work.