Articles, notes and random thoughts on Software Development and Technology
Yes, it finally happened. Vista has completion and is ready for shipping. Ready that is in the meaning that it is good to enough to sell to consumers, followed up by the constant download of patches via Windows Update.
News.com have a summary of the development history behind possibly Microsoft’s largest software development project yet, and certainly the most delayed.
As Java is a statically typed language (meaning that variables are strongly typed and do no change type at runtime, unlike dynamically typed languages like Perl, Python, Groovy etc), it is possible to build tools that can analyze your code and look for common problems.
There are a number of these tools already out there, including FindBugs and PMD. Greg Sporar gives a quick overview of each in his blog on java.net.
crn.com has an article discussing the licensing model for open sourcing Java, and reports that the GPL license is likely to be chosen for Java SE and ME, and with CDDL to be used for EE.
Since the GPL license is arguably the most restrictive open source license and will without a doubt attract a lot of crtitisism for Sun, why is it likey that they will be chosing this license? The article points out that since derivitive works under the license also have to be licensed under the GPL, this prevents commercial forking from the code base, so will in fact allow Sun to retain some degree and control over where the code goes and what can be done with it.
Is this the right move for Java?
java.sun.com have an interview with James Gosling, the ‘father of Java’, on the topic of open sourcing Java, what it means for Java, and for Sun.
Read the interview here.
The interview closes with the question “Is emacs still your favorite integrated development environment (IDE)?”, and Gosling replies “Oh, no. I switched over to the NetBeans IDE long ago.”. If that isn’t a solid endorsement for NetBeans I don’t know what is.