Tales from a Trading Desk

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Sun vs Microsoft VM Source Code Release

It's nice to see that the Java Research License (JRL) source download includes the source code to the HotSpot Client and Server VM's.  Assuming the JRL HotSpot is identical to J2SE 5.0, it's a cool download for the developer who wants to know what the VM is doing, and how its doing it.  It's a shame Microsoft's Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure (SSCLI)  doesn't follow Sun's openness - maybe the up and coming Rotor release will fix this, and we will finally get to see the real code behind the GC instead of a simplified GC that was polled by the FJIT.
Posted: Nov 17 2004, 08:40 AM by mdavey | with 4 comment(s)
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Comments

Scott McNealy said:

Sun has this policy of giving away stuff it can't sell...see Solaris 10 :-)
# November 17, 2004 4:55 AM

Panos Theofanopoulos said:

Scott: How much does .NET cost ?
You do know that if MS did charge for .NET this site will not be existent !

Now if MS did gave the all BCL sources you also know that the numbers between C# and Java here

http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=160

will be comparable

Which is more affected by the low adoptions numbers of .NET, MS or .NET developers like you and me ?
# November 17, 2004 6:24 AM

JosephCooney said:

It's possible that parts of Microsoft's "retail" GC contains code licensed by Microsoft, so they cannot release it for free. I seem to recall a number of video card manufacturers had to release "binary only" kernel patches for Linux a while ago for this reason. They WANTED to release source for their drivers but because they had licensed parts of it from 3rd parties they couldn't. Just a theory.
# November 17, 2004 7:28 AM

Nat said:

Wow... this is interesting. Thanks for this.
# November 20, 2004 1:16 PM
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