Robin "Roblimo" Miller is Editor-in-Chief of OSDN, the corporate parent of Slashdot, NewsForge, Linux.com, and a number of other popular Web sites. Miller is a regular contributor to Online Journalism Review and is writing a book tentatively titled Build Profits Online for Financial Times Press, due out in 2002. He is a longtime software developer and advocate for the open source development community.
: Because Microsoft is so distanced from the open source community, do you see the JXTA P2P platform as a sort of "ace-in-the-hole" for Sun Microsystems in its long-term battle with .NET for respect (and sales) among developers?
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Robin Miller, Editor-in-Chief of OSDN |
A: Sun seems to have the problem of being reactive rather than proactive. The fact that Sun seems to view JXTA as a "weapon" in a "battle" against .NET is probably the biggest negative about what otherwise looks like promising technology. Sun needs to stop worrying about Microsoft. JXTA is plenty exciting all by itself. JXTA lets developers modify its code freely, which Microsoft will never allow with its .NET technology, but Sun needs to accentuate the positive side of this freedom instead of nyahh-nyahhing at Microsoft all the time.
Q: Do you believe Sun will use JXTA as a strategic tool to help improve its relationship with the open source community?
A: They'll try. They're working hard to make sure JXTA licenses don't conflict with the GPL. If they can get the hard-core free software people to like Sun—or at least not dislike Sun as much as they dislike other large hardware and software companies—Sun will have at least a decent working relationship with the open source community. Of course, to really have a good relationship with the open source community, Sun needs to open source Java itself, but I don't think many open source developers still hold out much hope of this ever happening.
Q: Do companies such as Oracle, Sun, and others give lip service to the open source community in general—touting open standards but carefully avoiding the term "open source"?
A: I think the first thing any executive thinks when he or she hears about open source is, "You mean there are developers out there who will work on my software for free, and all I have to do is let them look at our source code?" After embracing this idea enthusiastically—it's awfully hard to pass up free help, after all—the executive learns that in return for giving free help, those developers expect to become, in effect, the software's co-owners, right down to dictating its licensing terms. All of a sudden our hypothetical executive starts to have second thoughts about open source, and starts to talk about open standards instead.
Q: Could the influx of large corporations starting to lean on open source development for help eventually spoil the central focus of the community?
There's a difference between "leaning on" and "being part of" the open source community. IBM has salaried employees working full time on free software and open source software development. IBM is a full-fledged member of the open source community. Sun is part of the community on some days, but on other days it isn't. OpenOffice.org is a great contribution, but Sun reserves the right to include code from it in its commercial StarOffice product. On the other hand, Sun is okay with other companies and individuals basing products on OpenOffice code.
One of the biggest problems with large corporations getting involved with open source is the increasing proliferation and complexity of software licenses. I don't even pretend to fully understand all the open source licenses any more. At some point we are going to need more open source lawyers than programmers. That's sad, but once you start dealing with large American companies, the lawyers take over almost everything, and they are sure getting more involved in open source than I personally think is healthy. I suppose it's a good thing that open source development is a truly international phenomenon, so there are plenty of developers outside of the U.S. who can worry about writing software more than they worry about patent and license restrictions.
Q: Do you believe all developers should participate in an open source project at one time or another?
A: Only developers who work for Microsoft. I think they should all work on open source software, and more specifically free software licensed under the GPL, at least 10 hours every week.
