I can't believe how quickly the number of supports on PetitionSpot.com grew once Rick Ross from DZone posted the link to it on DZone's Twitter feed. My initial goal of 10.000 signatures is not that far away and to be honest, I was more less guessing what a "good number" of supporters would be. Having reached almost 4000 signatures already, I have now written a letter to Steve Jobs and I want to share it with you:
Dear Mr. Jobs,
Apple has recently announced through its Update Release Notes that the JRE/JDK maintained by Apple will be deprecated in future releases of Mac OS.
Apple has done so without giving any hints as to whether any cooperation with Oracle is in place to continue a JRE/JDK-effort for Mac OS.
As you undoubtedly are aware of, Macs have become an increasingly popular platform for “non-Microsoft” software development and the lack of information has therefore caused some concern in the Java Community.
I do, in part, agree with your statement that it may not be ideal for Apple to provide it’s own implementation of a technology owned by another corporation. However, Apple’s developers have so far done a very good job at maintaining a Java Development Kit and Runtime for Mac OS X. In fact, recent updates have always been fairly close after Sun’s (and now Oracle’s) releases.
A couple of days ago I started a simple online petition (http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/macjdk) asking Apple to contribute the Mac OS X-specific parts of its Java implementation to the OpenJDK BSD Port Project (http://wikis.sun.com/display/OpenJDK/BSDPort) and within days I collected thousands of signatures and it is still growing.
The OpenJDK project already has a working implementation of OpenJDK 6 and 7 for Mac OS X, which uses X11 for all the graphical parts. If Apple were to contribute it’s own implementation of the integration bits into Mac OS X, we would no doubt have a very solid Java for Mac which does not have to be maintained by Apple and will stay up to date since OpenJDK is a Oracle- and IBM-backed project to build coming versions of Java.
I believe that Apple supporting OpenJDK (and in particular the BSD Port effort) by contributing relevant parts of the Apple JDK/JRE source code will be mutually beneficial. Java Developers will be able to continue using their existing investments when Java 7 and/or Lion ships and Apple will continue to benefit from a large number of (in my opinion) open minded software engineers that are capable of providing Cocoa-based applications for the growing number of iOS-based devices on the market.
Sincerely,
Daniel Pfeifer
You may also have noticed that I received some constructive criticism on PetitionSpot.com for only mentioning the JDK, when it is in fact the whole lot (JDK/JRE) that is important to us. I have therefore updated the petition slightly ( adding JRE to the text and keeping the original so that nobody can claim I am cheating ;) ).
I also want to once again mention that when you sign the petition on PetitionSpot.com, the site will ask for a donation. The donation is exclusively for the operation of PetitionSpot.com, it is nothing I, Apple or Oracle will receive ( not that Apple or Oracle would need it... ).
Anyway, long story short, thanks for signing the petition and let's hope Steve will listen :)
October 26, 2010
October 23, 2010
Java for Mac, not Oracle's business [UPDATED]
As many of you, I was surprised to read that Apple would be phasing out Java from Mac OS X and Steve Jobs is basically trying to push the responsibility over to Oracle. It didn't take long, but within hours message boards were filled with posts about this. The reason? Quite simple, many of those that buy a MacBook Pro, are Java Developers to begin with! They bought a Mac because they like the hardware, because they can get a good-looking UNIX operating system and at the same time not sacrifice the ability to use Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office.
I myself am one of those Java Developers that bought a Mac for these precise reasons. If the guy at the Apple Store would have said "Sorry, no Java here", I would have turned around and left just to go to the Sony Center next door and buy one of those 13 inch Vaio's. And believe me, I am not the only one; I work as a consultant and have been in the business of making mission-critical and web-scale software development for around 10 years now, I know personally and by recognition literally hundreds of software engineers that, just like me, bought a Mac to pay their bills coding Java applications.
On top of this, one can't ignore the fact that Java Developers are some of the most open-minded software engineers out there. We like new frameworks, we like new languages (Scala, Groovy, et cetara) and we like to experiment. Me aside, I know enough Java Developers that learned Objective C and Xcode in their free time, just for fun... and because they were able to (after all, you already have a $2500 MacBook, why not install Xcode, too?)!
This may be my opinion, but Apple has become arrogant and disrespectful towards non-Apple-technology. This time, however, I can't stop to wonder if Apple expresses it's dislike towards the wrong crowd; iOS is fairly big now, but what if those "I pay my rent doing Java"-developers leave the Mac? There is no Xcode for Linux or Windows, you know... And let's face it: Very very few developers earn any money to speak of making Fart and Burp Apps for the iPhone or iPad. I guess Steve Jobs bets on having reached critical mass, but that remains to be seen (at least if nobody resolves the JDK issue anytime soon).
Steve recently commented on this by saying that he doesn't like playing catch-up with Oracle's Java and honestly, despite of all I wrote so far, I agree! I would appreciate it if Oracle provided a first-class JDK for Mac OS X just the same way they provide a first-class JDK for Windows, however, I do not think that it is Oracle's business; and why is not not Oracle's business? Because Oracle is in the business of providing software for the enterprise, they are not in the business of providing 250.000 tiny applications for iPhone owners... Not that there is anything wrong with it, Apple is doing very well by doing exactly that.
One might argue that Oracle already supports a competing operating system by providing a Windows JDK and that Oracle should show some goodwill throwing Mac OS X into the mix and yeah, it would be nice, but don't kid yourselves: Besides on the IT-staffs' desktops, Mac OS X is nowhere to be found in businesses. In ten years I have not seen a single server running any flavor of Mac OS. What I have seen is many Office Servers running Windows and thousands of machines running Solaris or Linux.
So, where does this leave us? For the time being we don't have any problem to speak of. Apple just released JDK 1.6.0_22, which will work just fine for a while. However, in less than a year Mac OS X Lion will be arriving and what if Apple really decides not to ship Java SE 7 on Mac OS X 10.7? Personally, I'd probably switch back to Ubuntu full time (tested 10.10 yesterday, it's really neat), but still: What's the purpose of owning an expensive MacBook Pro when I can't run Mac OS X?
Instead of just hoping and guessing we can take things in our own hands, after all, that's what Java developers are really good at. There is already a OpenJDK BSD Port Project in process and if Apple would be nice enough to contribute their source code to this project, I bet we will have a top notch OpenJDK for Mac OS X in time for Lion's release.
So, sign this petition and once I have collected enough signatures, I will submit it to Apple. Oh, and don't forget to tell your friends and colleagues about it.
--- UPDATE ---
I have been told by a fellow signer that PetitionSpot.com asks for donations when signing the petition. A donation given is nothing the petition starter (me in this case) receives, it is to support the operation of the website. Long story short, unless you want to support PetitionSpot.com, there is no need to donate. Neither I (or Apple/Oracle for that matter) will personally receive it.
I myself am one of those Java Developers that bought a Mac for these precise reasons. If the guy at the Apple Store would have said "Sorry, no Java here", I would have turned around and left just to go to the Sony Center next door and buy one of those 13 inch Vaio's. And believe me, I am not the only one; I work as a consultant and have been in the business of making mission-critical and web-scale software development for around 10 years now, I know personally and by recognition literally hundreds of software engineers that, just like me, bought a Mac to pay their bills coding Java applications.
On top of this, one can't ignore the fact that Java Developers are some of the most open-minded software engineers out there. We like new frameworks, we like new languages (Scala, Groovy, et cetara) and we like to experiment. Me aside, I know enough Java Developers that learned Objective C and Xcode in their free time, just for fun... and because they were able to (after all, you already have a $2500 MacBook, why not install Xcode, too?)!
This may be my opinion, but Apple has become arrogant and disrespectful towards non-Apple-technology. This time, however, I can't stop to wonder if Apple expresses it's dislike towards the wrong crowd; iOS is fairly big now, but what if those "I pay my rent doing Java"-developers leave the Mac? There is no Xcode for Linux or Windows, you know... And let's face it: Very very few developers earn any money to speak of making Fart and Burp Apps for the iPhone or iPad. I guess Steve Jobs bets on having reached critical mass, but that remains to be seen (at least if nobody resolves the JDK issue anytime soon).
Steve recently commented on this by saying that he doesn't like playing catch-up with Oracle's Java and honestly, despite of all I wrote so far, I agree! I would appreciate it if Oracle provided a first-class JDK for Mac OS X just the same way they provide a first-class JDK for Windows, however, I do not think that it is Oracle's business; and why is not not Oracle's business? Because Oracle is in the business of providing software for the enterprise, they are not in the business of providing 250.000 tiny applications for iPhone owners... Not that there is anything wrong with it, Apple is doing very well by doing exactly that.
One might argue that Oracle already supports a competing operating system by providing a Windows JDK and that Oracle should show some goodwill throwing Mac OS X into the mix and yeah, it would be nice, but don't kid yourselves: Besides on the IT-staffs' desktops, Mac OS X is nowhere to be found in businesses. In ten years I have not seen a single server running any flavor of Mac OS. What I have seen is many Office Servers running Windows and thousands of machines running Solaris or Linux.
So, where does this leave us? For the time being we don't have any problem to speak of. Apple just released JDK 1.6.0_22, which will work just fine for a while. However, in less than a year Mac OS X Lion will be arriving and what if Apple really decides not to ship Java SE 7 on Mac OS X 10.7? Personally, I'd probably switch back to Ubuntu full time (tested 10.10 yesterday, it's really neat), but still: What's the purpose of owning an expensive MacBook Pro when I can't run Mac OS X?
Instead of just hoping and guessing we can take things in our own hands, after all, that's what Java developers are really good at. There is already a OpenJDK BSD Port Project in process and if Apple would be nice enough to contribute their source code to this project, I bet we will have a top notch OpenJDK for Mac OS X in time for Lion's release.
So, sign this petition and once I have collected enough signatures, I will submit it to Apple. Oh, and don't forget to tell your friends and colleagues about it.
--- UPDATE ---
I have been told by a fellow signer that PetitionSpot.com asks for donations when signing the petition. A donation given is nothing the petition starter (me in this case) receives, it is to support the operation of the website. Long story short, unless you want to support PetitionSpot.com, there is no need to donate. Neither I (or Apple/Oracle for that matter) will personally receive it.
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