IBM it's Your Turn

Last week I was talking with a friend who was critical of Sun including Derby into the JDK. I can understand how people could make this mistake. With so many things being included in the JDK and with the bundling of extra things in the download that goes along with it, it can be a bit confusing to sort out what is what. However that started me on a bit of a rant so you may want to put your rant blinders on for the rest of this one. I've always found it a bit hypocritical that while IBM has been calling on Sun to OSS their implementation of Java while their version remains buried deep inside it's product offerings. In fact I've always found it odd that IBM and others hold Sun to a higher standard of behavior than they are willing to follow. Take the bundling issue for example. Sun is continuously criticized for bundling Derby and NetBeans with their version of the JDK. No mention that you can also get unbundled versions of everything. Well IBM, Sun has done it, they've are now pretty far down the path of releasing their entire Java stack via GPL/Classpath Exception. So maybe it's time to step up to the plate and take the necessary steps for you to release your implementation to OSS. Oh and while you're at it, can you please offer an unbundled version of your JDK? Sun does! And if anyone from BEA is reading maybe they want to take up the torch with JRocket? Just a thought.

tags: java  jdk  oss  jrocket  ibm  sun  derby