Stallman slams Java moves

THE FOUNDER of GNU Project and Free Software Foundation Richard Stallman has lashed out at Sun's recent moves to free up Java.

Richard Stallman said that the Open Sauce community is all abuzz with the rumour that Sun has made its implementation Java free software or "open source".

However Stallman points out that Sun has actually done nothing apart from allowing some more convenient redistribution of the binaries of its Java platform.

Writing an article for News Forge, here, Stallman said that 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.

In other words Java is just as proprietary as it ever was and does not come close to meeting any criteria for free software.

To be fair to Sun, it never said it was, Stallman said. It only predicts that the moves will make Java "widely available" on "leading open source platforms".

Open Sourcerers didn't read the Sun announcement carefully he said. µ