Vitriolic Trash Talk?
Tim Bray: I would have thought that making it a little less painful for GNU/Linux users to install Java would generally be regarded as a good (not huge, but good) thing—I know that Simon Phipps, Mark Shuttleworth, Rich Sands, and a bunch of other people worked damn hard on it—but instead (see Simon), it provoked a load of vitriolic trash talk. I’m disappointed.
First on Simon’s list? Me. Vitriolic? Trash Talk? You decide.
More of a yawn. Or perhaps, a loyal opposition of sorts.
Remember, Tim was the one who noted that the ones who run it on Linux haven’t had trouble installing it.
That would include me. Now would I prefer apt-get over tar? The beauty of apt-get is the dependency management. Now I have to ask... who would code a depend on a package which is (1) placed in the multiverse ghetto, (2) requires a click-through license, and (3) is installed at such a low priority that you still get GNU libgcj by default even after installation of the Sun-JDK?
I’ve known Simon for a number of years. We knew of each other obliquely when he was at IBM, but I didn’t really meet Simon until he joined Sun. It was Danese that introduced us. Our first F2F conversation was about open sourcing Java. IIRC, Duncan was there. Many, many years ago.
Just because I don’t necessarily fawn over everything Simon may have been involved with doesn’t mean that I don’t hold him in high regard. And to make it clear in case it wasn’t otherwise, nice effort, but I’m underwhelmed by the results in this particular case.
Sorry. Or, as Bob Sutor said let us know when Java is officially open sourced using an existing OSI-approved license