O'Reilly Network Weblogs: O'Reilly Editors Debate "Havoc Pennington rant at Sun's strange strategy"

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http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4543

O'Reilly Editors Debate "Havoc Pennington rant at Sun's strange strategy"

by Tim O'Reilly
Mar. 8, 2004

I recently decided to use my blog to share interesting tidbits from the O'Reilly internal editors list -- especially debates that I'd love to get customers to comment on. Here's a recent exchange between Edd Dumbill, the editor of xml.com, and a gnome/dashboard hacker, and Mike Loukides, our senior Java editor.

Edd forwarded a pointer to "Havoc Pennington's rant on Sun's strange strategy". Edd quoted from Havoc's blog:

Maybe everyone but me already saw this, but Sun rewrites Evolution in Java Swing. Yay, an "open source" mail/calendar client with a dependency on a proprietary JDK. Yay, let's rewrite a couple million lines of code and fragment the Linux desktop platform; clearly the way to beat Microsoft.
In other news, increasing dependencies on the proprietary JDK in OO.org, which forces the codebase shipped by Red Hat, Debian, and other companies who won't rely on a JDK license from Sun to diverge more and more from the mainline. Not to mention the StarOffice vs. OpenOffice.org delta.
Let's not talk about forking the Window system on a fundamental level - I'm curious how they plan to use this, because GTK+ and GNOME sure as hell aren't taking patches to use a proprietary window system. Oh, rewrite everything in Swing! ;-) Or fork the GTK+ API?
Of course, this is probably good for everyone else; Sun has to fund proprietary-size development teams while everyone else benefits from the open source model. Sun JDS - your nonstandard proprietary desktop solution. Buy it today.

Mike Loukides responded:

Oh, come on.
Write your apps in Swing, and they can run on Windows and OS X. It's true. With hardly any debugging, if at all, and certainly no platform-specific code. Too many people believed the Microsoft FUD. I've got a fairly complex GUI app that runs perfectly, without even bothering to debug, on Linux, all versions of Windows, OS X, and Solaris. And probably more OS, if I had them. People tend to forget that Linux is NOT the center of the world, and isn't likely to be the center of the world.
I wouldn't mind seeing Evolution run on my Windows machines. Or on OS X (yeah, you can run it under X, but that's really a step backwards.)

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. In addition to Foo Camps ("Friends of O'Reilly" Camps, which gave rise to the "un-conference" movement), O'Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the Web 2.0 Summit, the Web 2.0 Expo, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the Gov 2.0 Summit, and the Gov 2.0 Expo. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar, "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim's long-term vision for his company is to change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators. In addition to O'Reilly Media, Tim is a founder of Safari Books Online, a pioneering subscription service for accessing books online, and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, an early-stage venture firm.