Thursday, January 22, 2004
I really find the new linux.java.net more than a little strange. Sun really seems to be trying to tie Linux and Java together but I don't see anything concrete beyond their own distribution and a lot of marketing fluff. If Sun really wants to leverage Linux & Java together they're going to have to relax their restrictions on the distribution of the JREs. How many free Linux distributions come with a JRE/JDK installed? Of course, this is partly because the JRE is not open source but another big reason is the requirement to license the JRE in order to distribute it which quite likely involves money changing hands. Not exactly something within the reach of someone creating a free Linux distribution. Strangely, I think Microsoft's .net is more likely to find a home on Linux than Java is by virtue of the Mono project. OSNews has an interesting article on this very subject. Sad.
