El curioso incidente de Sun a medianoche
Dejamos esta página web como referencia histórica. A diciembre de 2006, Sun está liberando su plataforma Java bajo la GPL de GNU. Cuando este cambio finalice, esperamos que Java de Sun sea software libre.
Por Richard M. Stallman,
24 de
mayo de 2006.
Our community has been abuzz with the rumor that Sun has made its implementation Java free software (or “open source”). Community leaders even publicly thanked Sun for its contribution. What is Sun's new contribution to the FLOSS community?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing—and that's what makes the response to this non-incident so curious.
Sun's Java implementation remains proprietary software, just as before. It doesn't come close to meeting the criteria for free software, or the similar but slightly looser criteria for open source. Its source code is available only under an NDA.
So what did Sun actually do? It allowed more convenient redistribution of the binaries of its Java platform. With this change, GNU/Linux distros can include the non-free Sun Java platform, just as some now include the non-free nVidia driver. But they do so only at the cost of being non-free.
La licencia de Sun tiene una restricción que puede reducir, irónicamente, la tendencia a que los usuarios acepten software que no sea libre sin pensarlo dos veces: insiste en que el distribuidor del sistema operativo debe conseguir la aceptación explícita de la licencia por parte del usuario antes de permitir al usuario instalar el código. Esto significa que el sistema no puede instalar discretamente la plataforma Java sin advertir a los usuarios que tienen software que no es libre, cosa que hacen algunos sistemas GNU/Linux cuando instalan el driver de nVidia discretamente.
If you look closely at Sun's announcement, you will see that it accurately represents these facts. It does not say that Sun's Java platform is free software, or even open source. It only predicts that the platform will be “widely available” on “leading open source platforms”. Available, that is, as proprietary software, on terms that deny your freedom.
Why did this non-incident generate a large and confused reaction? Perhaps because people do not read these announcements carefully. Ever since the term “open source” was coined, we have seen companies find ways to use it and their product name in the same sentence. (They don't seem to do this with “free software”, though they could if they wanted to.) The careless reader may note the two terms in proximity and falsely assume that one talks about the other.
Some believe that this non-incident represents Sun's exploratory steps towards eventually releasing its Java platform as free software. Let's hope Sun does that some day. We would welcome that, but we should save our appreciation for the day that actually occurs. In the mean time, the Java Trap still lies in wait for the work of programmers who don't take precautions to avoid it.
We in the GNU Project continue developing the GNU Compiler for Java and GNU Classpath; we made great progress in the past year, so our free platform for Java is included in many major GNU/Linux distros. If you want to run Java and have freedom, please join in and help.