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The "One Laptop Per Child" project has a great device ready to ship, but there's no Java on there. Let's think about working together to put Java on OLPC!
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
[quote]It certainly hasn't hurt Netbeans popularity that Sun gave up its "good stewart of Java" attitude in this area, bundled (its own) Netbeans with the JDK (for all Java developers), much to the joy of its Java partners. These bundles are the first download links for JDK 1.4 and 1.5 (third in JDK 1.6) on the Sun pages. The "Glassfish + JDK" bundle is actually the second link for 1.5 and 1.6 (makes the Sun JEE partners happy .[/quote]
This has been tackled so many times before... Anyway. You can download the JDK without NetBeans. Besides, Sun can do whatever it goddamn wants with its own products! You surely can't blame them for offering new Java developers a complete, free, and now fully open source development environment? And by environment I mean the SDK with the IDE.
Maybe we should remember what Sun gave away for free in the first place. The Java platform on which lots of companies and jobs are built today. Whining endlessly because they don't give away YOUR favorite IDE with the SDK is just insulting.
Romain Guy's Java Weblog, #ProgX, Jext
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
> It might sound unimportant to some of you but> NetBeans clearly got one thing right: marketing and
> naming. NetBeans' web sites and IDE modules names are
> clearly a lot more user friendly that Eclipse's. It's
> been a while since I used Eclipse but I'm definitely
> confused when I read about "DLTK, ECF, EMF" or "TPTP"
> or "JDT." What the heck does that mean?
Wow, this is probably the first time I've seen anyone compliment Sun on their marketing and naming. A company that has brought us gems like Java 2, Java Desktop and even the latest marketing stunt, changing the stock ticker to JAVA.
Although I do agree the Eclipse naming is hard for someone that is new to Eclipse. When you have a large diverse technology portfolio it just takes time. I usually take the time to write out the meaning of these acronyms but I figure on EclipseZone most people would know.
Btw, believe it or not I know a lot of people in the Eclipse and Java community who think Matisse is a famous painter.
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
Because NetBeans got it mostly right does mean Sun always made the right choices in naming.>I usually take the time to write out the meaning of these acronyms but I figure on
>EclipseZone most people would know.
That's my point. When you're new to Eclipse it's a scary mess of acronyms.
>Btw, believe it or not I know a lot of people in the Eclipse and Java community who
>think Matisse is a famous painter
Matisse was the code name. The real name is simply NetBeans GUI Builder. Unfortunately, Matisse is somehow preferred to NetBeans GUI Builder.
Romain Guy's Java Weblog, #ProgX, Jext
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
> I think you described both models mostly correct. I> think that compared to, say, 10 years ago, IBM gives
> a lot more software away (Eclipse, Geronimo, DB2
> Express etc.). However, I think your financial
> conclusions are wrong, and this is important to
> understand why IBM and Sun act like that.
I didn't mean to imply that Sun's profitability stemmed soley from their services vision taking off. The important thing as far as I'm concerned is that they're remaining profitable -- not how.
Similarly I don't see any reason to fund an 84.5% margin on any product.
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
>> That's my point. When you're new to Eclipse it's a
> scary mess of acronyms.
Fair enough, here are the full names
DLTK - Dynamic Language Toolkit
ECF - Eclipse Communication Framework
EMF - Eclipse Modeling Framework
TPT - Test and Performance Tools Platform
JDT - Java Development Tools
I hope this helps.
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
> This has been tackled so many times before... Anyway.> You can download the JDK without NetBeans. Besides,
> Sun can do whatever it goddamn wants with its own
> products! You surely can't blame them for offering
> new Java developers a complete, free, and now fully
> open source development environment? And by
> environment I mean the SDK with the IDE.
>
> Maybe we should remember what Sun gave away for free
> in the first place. The Java platform on which lots
> of companies and jobs are built today. Whining
> endlessly because they don't give away YOUR favorite
> IDE with the SDK is just insulting.
We should all be grateful to Sun for creating Java and giving it to the world. Sun also (voluntarily) took the role of the steward of Java, and I think overall, they've done a good job. They've also helped growing an ecosystem of partners around Java. This isn't easy since they work with companies (IBM, Oracle, BEA etc.) on Java that they also compete with. Although Sun carries the lion share of that work, the partners carry some of that work and also pay some money to Java (license fees, fees for certification / TCK etc.), although that probably doesn't cover the expenses of Sun.
Now to the JDK bundles: Most Java developers use the Sun JDK, so they come to the "Java steward" site to download. But there's "Sun the product company" and offers their IDE and application server as a bundle with the JDK (they're both open source but largely Sun-driven, and Sun offers training / support / services for them, so I consider this "Sun products" in this context). Now the Sun Java partners want to make money so selling their IDEs and application servers, so everybody using one of these Sun bundles is a lost customer to them. Compared to their partners, Sun has what I call the unfair advantage of easily reaching nearly all Java developers and sticking their products right in their face. There's a reason why in a supermarket the shelves at the cash registers are the most expensive places for a vendors - everybody goes through there and has time to look at the wares their while waiting, so the chance of purchase is much higher than everywhere else.
Does Sun have the right to do so? I'd say yes - it's no secret that Sun hasn't gotten filthy rich through Java, unlike IBM for instance which had revenues of $3.7 billion on the mostly Java-based WebSphere middleware. Is it the right thing to do from the "stewart of Java" perspective? I'd say no because it angers / damages the Java partner ecosystem. It also doesn't help that Sun puts "Java" on everything in order to monetize Java: Java is now a programming language, a platform for phones / desktop / servers, a collection of Sun middleware, a Sun Linux desktop, a smart card, a Sun database, a Sun Visual IDE, a multimedia scripting language, a phone operating system, the Sun stock ticker name, and the name of that guy with the ponytail - wait, he's still called "Schwartz"
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
> I've just been through the pain of using> RAD/RSM/Websphere heavily on an enterprise project.
> I'm glad that RAD and RSM aren't free. That way I
> can avoid them more easily. What do they put in
> that 2GB compressed install for RAD? A generic
> installation manager for each product? Complexity
> on complexity. Don't get me started on websphere.
>
> Personally, I'm very glad that they have only
> released the "bare-bones" eclipse platform.
I've worked with WebSphere Studio a couple of years, and it was a resource hog if I ever saw one. However, there were a couple of diamonds in that pile: they had a visual JSF editor before everybody else, they had a data-binding RAD tool a long time ago, and I'd also be interested in the requirements / testing tools.
> I just wish that they'd "loosen up" on some of the
> smaller stuff. I've long given up looking at any
> alphaworks stuff. The last time I checked they were
> offering alpha-level stuff at $1k for a license
> without support... I can't imagine they are making
> much off the small stuff. C.f. also the silly
> Project Zero licensing cost...
Yes, Project Zero and Jazz have some stupid, half-baked approaches. I hope that at least Jazz fails to a certain degree so that it gets donated to Eclipse, because it really sounds interesting.
> > Man, I sound like I'm obsessed with this stuff.
> ;-)
>
> It's interesting. When I worked for OTI/IBM, I went
> to an IBM seminar and got the question "Who is the
> world's second largest software company?" wrong. It
> turned out to be MS :-)
Now MS is bigger.
> Andrew
> p.s. because I got the question wrong I missed out on
> one of those cool "Drag me, drop me, treat me like an
> object" t-shirts :-(
Cool shirts!
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
> I didn't mean to imply that Sun's profitability> stemmed soley from their services vision taking off.
> The important thing as far as I'm concerned is that
> they're remaining profitable -- not how.
In the IT market, nothing is as profitable as software products - not hardware (component costs) or services (human cost). So I think that by giving software away, it is much, much harder for Sun to be as profitable as a well-executing software company it's going up against (IBM now again or Microsoft with monopoly profits), because the alternate revenue streams they claim (consultations, trainings, education, certifications, licensing and other similar services - see second last question at http://blogs.sun.com/roumen/entry/questions_from_netbeans_day_jazoon ), the software vendor has as well in addition to the software revenue, and most of these streams are way less profitable than selling software. So Sun needs a dramatically bigger market share than their software company to make up for it in revenue (but probably never in profitability).
> Similarly I don't see any reason to fund an 84.5%
> margin on any product.
Why not? I mean I base purchase decisions on the merits of the product and its price. But everything else being equal, I would even go for the vendor with the higher margin because they a) either sell more than everybody else (which makes it easier for me to find employees for / online resources about that product), b) they have less bugs or more efficient support (which lowers my maintenance cost), c) are more efficient in getting the product out (which I admire because I work in a software product company myself), or d) any combination of the above. Now the higher margin could also be due to poor support, but I think you can find that out a lot of times ahead of a purchase, and in the long term, sales probably go down because of it, and so does the margin.
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
> > Similarly I don't see any reason to fund an> 84.5%
> > margin on any product.
>
> Why not? I mean I base purchase decisions on the
> merits of the product and its price. But everything
> else being equal, I would even go for the vendor with
> the higher margin because they a) either sell more
> than everybody else (which makes it easier for me to
> find employees for / online resources about that
> product), b) they have less bugs or more efficient
> support (which lowers my maintenance cost), c) are
> more efficient in getting the product out (which I
> admire because I work in a software product company
> myself), or d) any combination of the above. Now the
> higher margin could also be due to poor support, but
> I think you can find that out a lot of times ahead of
> a purchase, and in the long term, sales probably go
> down because of it, and so does the margin.
Or (e) simply have tremendous marketing and a gift at using their consulting arm to produce vendor lock-in.
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
> TPT - Test and Performance Tools PlatformShouldn't this one be TPTP? I remember that because it's like a double teepee
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
Thanks, even though I looked them up myself and already knew most of themRomain Guy's Java Weblog, #ProgX, Jext
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
It was pretty bad getting GMF off the ground, if only because it had requirements on specific versions of dependent plugins that you had to download individually. It's gotten much better under the fact that they're all in Europa now.Alex.
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
I use EMF/UML2 extensively in a stand along Swing software product (i.e. not based around RCP etc), and it was a very difficult job indeed extracting them from Eclipse... At one point, I almost gave up. However, I carried on due to a commercial commitment. I'm glad I did, but what a pain...This is a shame, because they are superb libraries.
Andrew
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
Interesting that, while you pose the question as Eclipse-the-platform vs. Eclipse-the-IDE, what you really mean is Eclipse-the-Java-IDE.I come at Eclipse as a Rumpelstiltskin programmer who managed to sleep through Java; I've been using it for Ruby on Rails for maybe two years.
Obviously there's been a lot of turmoil on the Ruby IDE front, with RDT and RadRails first competing with, then being assimilated by, Aptana, who've now source-opened the whole thing. And then there's new kid DLTK, which looks like a really good idea but is too new to call.
But that aside, Eclipse is much, much heavier than I need. And while I'm not one of those people who avoids "rich" tools on principle - who knows what I'll grow into later - when that heaviness gets in the way of my productivity, it's a problem. Eclipse (without even building Java apps, mind you!) pushed me over the 2G limit on my MacBook Pro and put me through VM-paging hell, while NetBeans takes maybe 40M. And it's sluggish.
Eclipse definitely feels like a "thing for things", as you put it. Every time I start wondering if Eclipse offers such-and-such a feature, I go looking, and my head starts hurting. Database tools? Well, there's DTP. But that doesn't have any database tools (or didn't use to, anyway), it just lets you build them. DLTK isn't actually an IDE, it's a thing that lets you make an IDE. Ditto any number of other core packages. Everything is an enabling package, a framework, a platform. Nothing actually DOES anything. I'm not building a rich thick/thin hybrid standards-compliant client for corporate trans-enterprise leveraged integrated extensible workflow management software-oriented architected ISO-9000 solutions. I'm a programmer and I want an IDE to help me write code.
And innovation? Mylyn is certainly innovative, and it's probably the one thing keeping me on Eclipse. But I went back through the release notes for 3.1 through 3.3, and I didn't see any truly innovative features jump out at me. CTRL-3 is nice if I remember to use it; ditto pervasive filtering.
There are some nice features that aren't new, which means they were probably innovative once. Working sets are nice, or would be if they were actually as universal as they try to be. Fast views are cool. The compare editor is top-notch, as are the team annotations.
But overall, for my uses, NetBeans is moving a whole lot faster than Eclipse, and I'm definitely keeping it an eye on it.
Re: NetBeans wins open-source 'bossie' award
> Why is it called NetBeans when it doesn't run on .Net> and hasn't got beans?
From http://www.netbeans.org/about/history.html
****
The original plan for the business was to develop network-enabled JavaBeans components. Jarda Tulach, who designed the IDE's basic architecture, came up with the name NetBeans to describe what they would do. The IDE would be the way to deliver them - and that's where the name NetBeans comes from. When the spec for Enterprise Java Beans came out, it made more sense to work with the standard for such components than to compete with it - but the name stuck.
****
But the Beans part of the name is still applicable because the architecture of NetBeans is heavily implemented on the JavaBeans specification thanks to both architects Jarda Tulach and Jesse Glick. It's pretty amazing when you see that almost every object in NetBeans is a JavaBean and you can manipulate almost everything at runtime through the JavaBean specification (ie introspection).
This leads to one reason i have remained faithful to netbeans all these years: Since day one netbeans has stuck to (and pushed the frontier of) the standards. Java developers jumping into the netbeans code learn core standards not netbeans' custom standards. There has never been a "not-imvented-here" syndrome within the netbeans development community.
Eclipse, on the other hand... ...well take SWT for example
I'm not going to rant on here, that wouldn't be fair, but you can read more here: http://www.wever.org/java/space/java/Why+Eclipse+is+not+opensource