Contents - Cultural View

Comparison of the Java and .NET platforms 93
Comparison of the Java and .NET platforms
Legal issues
Standardization
The two platforms, their programming libraries, their binary formats, and their runtime environments have largely
been governed by very different means.
International standards organizations Ecma International and ISO/IEC define the standard for the .NET executable
environment (known as the Common Language Infrastructure, or CLI), and .NET executable format (known as
Common Intermediate Language, or CIL), but excluding most of the foundation classes (the Base Class Library, or
BCL). This formal committee-based standardization process is in keeping with the way very popular languages like
COBOL, Fortran and C have been standardized in the past. The standards do not include many new libraries that
Microsoft has implemented on top of the standard framework, such as those for accessing databases, or building GUI
and Web applications, such as Windows Forms, ASP.NET and ADO.NET.
To date, no part of Java has been standardized by Ecma International, ISO/IEC, ANSI, or any other third-party
standards organization. While Sun Microsystems has unlimited and exclusive legal rights to modify and license its
Java trademarks, Sun voluntarily participates in a process called the Java Community Process (JCP) that allows
interested parties to propose changes to any of Sun's Java technologies (from language and tools to API) via forums,
consultation exercises and expert groups. The JCP requires a membership fee for commercial contributors, while
non-commercial contributors and individuals can join for free.
Within the rules of the JCP anyone can bring forward a proposal for a new Platform Edition Specifications or
suggest changes to the Java language. All proposals are reviewed and voted on by interested JCP members at various
stages throughout their lifecycle, however when it comes to including changes into the standard reference
implementations (Java SE, Java EE and Java ME) modifications may be subject to rejection by Sun, who retain
ultimate power of veto.
Java standards are maintained by a suite of test applications which examine every aspect of a given Java
implementation against a rigorous specification. Only if an implementation passes the tens of thousands of individual
tests can it use the trademarked name "Java", and associated logos and brands.
License
Java
While "Java" is a Sun trademark, and only Sun can license the name "Java", numerous free software projects exist
that are compatible with Sun Java. Most notably, GNU Classpath and GCJ provide a free software class library and a
compiler that are partially compatible with the current version of Sun Java. [1] Sun announced in November 13, 2006
that all Java source code, excluding closed-source code for which they do not retain rights, will be released under a
modified version of the GPL, [2] and released two fundamental parts of the JRE and JDK: HotSpot and the javac
[3] [4]
compiler under the GPL.
Following their promise, Sun released the complete source code of the Class library under GPL on May 8, 2007,
except some limited parts that were licensed by Sun from 3rd parties who did not want their code to be released
under an open-source license [5] (see also Free Java implementations). Sun's goal is to replace the parts that remain
closed with alternative implementations and make the class library completely open.
In June 2008, Red Hat announced [6] that the IcedTea project has passed the rigorous Java TCK, indicating a fully
functional open-source implementation of the Java platform.