Re: PostgreSQL in the press again

Christopher,
Thanks for clearing a few things up. I think what you wrote made a lot o
sense. Not surprisingly, I have some opinions concerning the things to
"hate" :-)

> The problem with Java is twofold:
>
> 1. Naive system implementations wind up gratuitously using a lot of
> memory.
>
> 2. The garbage collection system makes it particularly difficult to
> be aware of how the "memory life cycle" works. Which helps keep
> developers naive for somewhat longer...
>
> In the case of eRServer, the way the snapshot system was constructed
> led to "gratuitous memory use," and that's not an obvious result of
> either 1. or 2.
>
I agree with this. That's why I included "the right skills" in my
original claim. It's a known fact that Java get's bashed a lot because
it gives you freedom under responsibility and people tend to forget the
latter.

> The things to "hate" about Java aren't about any of this. It's more
> like:
>
> - Java runs, in a "supportable" manner, on way fewer platforms than
> PostgreSQL
>
An argument that holds true in theory. I wonder what percentage of
potential replication users that would be lost in real life due to
portability issues when moving to Java. My guess is zero or perhaps
fragments of a percent. I seriously belive that the loss contributed to
"religion" would be greater.

On the Java plus side, you can distribute one runnable binary for all
platforms where it *does* run as opposed to source that requires the
user to have a complete build environment. So perhaps this actually
works in Java's favor.

> - If you pick libraries that are functional enough to be useful,
> then you likely have to get a Sun JDK with pretty proprietary
> licensing
>
Here I disagree with some emphasis. The JRE in itself contains far more
useful libraries than any C/C++ compiler package that I'm aware of. And
if you want to complement what you have, go to Sourceforge, Apache, or
any other Open Source site where a lot of very useful packages can be
found. Many of them with production quality.

The JDK/JRE licensing in itself has never been a problem in any projects
where I have been involved, nor any other Java project that I'm aware
of. You just don't bundle the JRE, you assume that the customer has it
installed.

> - Due to licensing complexities, it's WAY more complex to deploy
> Java-based apps than C-based apps. The average Linux or BSD
> distribution contains hundreds if not thousands of apps
> deployed in C; doing the same for Java has proved more than
> troublesome.
>
Funny, I've been writing Java apps for the better part of 6 years now.
I've *never* experienced any licensing complexities *what so ever*. Many
thousand users use Java on Linux and FreeBSD and they are not violating
any licenses.

Can you please explain where and how you see license problems pop up?

All and all, I think the licensing question is non existent for people
who want to provide utilities written in Java. Sourceforge today counts
13192 Java projects which is very close to the number of C (13762) and
C++ (14066) projects. A vast majority (95%) of those projects are
OSI-Approved Open Source. I have no doubt that Java will be #1 by this
time next year. On the Apache site, you'll find other really useful (and
free) Java utilities.

In other words, if licensing was a problem you wouldn't see the Java
community expanding the way it does today, using free Open Source as a
primary vehicle.

Regards,
Thomas Hallgren