Why, Sun? Why?

Submitted: Sunday, April 11, 1999 22:10

Ok, I'm in Java class, and I have an assignment due in a couple days. Been having problems with getting any part of the JDK to run since the glibc 2.1 upgrade, so I decide it's time to get serious and get the problem fixed.

So, I go to the ever-helpful Deja News to find out what the deal is. Sure enough, it's a glibc 2.1 problem. A simple recompile from source should fix it.

Off to the Blackdown site to find what I need. Well, they don't have a prebuilt binary for glibc 2.1, which isn't surprising, considering that it is bleeding edge. So I head over to that section of the FAQ with instructions on how to compile from the source.

I had hoped that Sun had seen the light with all the recent hype about opening up, etc, but what I found has convinced me that Sun is determined to remain in the dark ages, even if it means the failure of their precious programming language. To get the source, you have to agree to their license (which I never got to read because their page consistently crashed Netscape). Ok, agree to the license and download; it ain't open source, but it's doable, I figure.

Oh, but it's not a simple matter of typing your name and email address. You have to download it, print it, sign it (with a pen), fax it, and then WAIT several DAYS, at which time they tell you the location of the source (which changes regularly, so you have to get it right when they tell you).

What is this, the stone age? Faxing? Days? How does this company plan to make it in the electronic age. Changing the name/url of the code just to keep people from getting it? Somebody clue me in as to why a company would try to prevent people from learning/using their stuff. They certainly aren't making money by making people send them faxes, since they're not charging for it, so why not catch up to the times and put it on a publicly available server instead of trying to play keep-away?

Anyway, this nonsense has not endeared me to the company. It seems like they're well-meaning, but they always manage to screw things up somehow. Oh well. I hear they make good hardware. Maybe one of these days, they'll catch up with the rest of the world on software distribution policies.