Linux distros lead jumps from Sun

Sun Microsystems has lost a key individual responsible for getting its aspiring open-source software included in leading Linux distributions. Barton George has quit Sun after 13 years, hard on the heels of having helped secure the inclusion of an open-source friendly version of Sun's Java Development Kit (JDK) - OpenJDK - with …

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not hard to get software in

not if you are willing to package it up, and ensure the correct dependencies are matched.

You don't even need to get it into the main line, just package up and let the user point the package manager in the right direction.

If your license ain't GPL or compatible you will probably find Debian hard, to get into, but nearly every other one doesn't care if you want to supply and you package.

Mirrors always help, as does free equipment.

But it is Java and well, not many people really like to code in Java do they. But I suppose there are a few apps that need the VM (and specific VMs at that).

Didn't Goldman Sachs, and Lehmans both use Java, I think Goldman went to C#, so see what happens to you when you put Java and MS into the mix, you end up being both a victim and instigator of global economic meltdown, a lesson there for us all.

[Steve McIntyre]

Good luck to him

Barton and I spoke lots of times over the last few years - he's a nice guy and helped organise Sun sponsoring Debconf. We met up again at Debconf in Argentina this summer and had a good natter about Debian, Sun and life in general.

Good luck to him in his new job; I hope he enjoys it.

[melinda]

very old news - not Linux Distros Lead

wasn't this first reported about a month ago... Gavin, surely you could be a little more on top of your game! (And check his role, he was a marketing guy, no technical contribution).

[Robert Lougher]

@Anonymous Coward

You are a moron if you think the techies using Java caused the meltdown. Go back to playing with your Python in "moms basement".

[Anonymous Coward]

@Robert Lougher

Oohh, you sound like some twat trying to foist VM's onto the world.

Get a job you bloody hippy, you are flogging a dead horse.

[Colin Drew]

How much for that dead horse?

Or is the dead horse being beaten rather than sold?

[A J Stiles]

Sun's long-term strategy

I believe Sun's long-term strategy is to groom knowledgeable IT people to expect to receive the Source Code whenever they choose well-known, high-end products. That is why they opened up OpenOffice.org, Solaris and Java; and why they bought up MySQL, which was already Open Source.

After all, Source Code is the one thing Microsoft can never offer. And let's be brutally honest for a moment here; as piracy-prevention tactics go, not supplying the Source Code with a piece of software is about as effective as not having supplying the sheet music with an LP. All it does is piss programmers off, sometimes to the point of feeling the need to start a Movement.

Now, just by the law of averages, more than one MS-hater will end up, sooner or later, in a position to specify hardware and software. Gates and Ballmer and abuse of an effective monopoly position were the reasons these people walked out on MS; but the Source Code was the reason they stayed. And the whole Vista debacle has people asking whether there are any realistic alternatives to Microsoft that do not depend on the whims and caprices of a community of users? Sun know all that, of course.

[Daniel B.]

No Java?

"But it is Java and well, not many people really like to code in Java do they."

Do they? I'd rather go back to C++ than jump to C# or (god forbid) VB. Java is pretty much the only multi-platform compiled language, as the alternatives (PHP, Ruby, Python) are usually scripting/interpretative languages. The MS solution doesn't count, even with Mono, as it isn't really complete on the non-MS platforms.